

f 



1 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Shelf. .Ml6 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



FAITH, HOPE, LOVE 



DUTY 



DANIEL WISE, D.D. 

AUTHOR OF 

Path of Li/e^ Pleasant Pathways ^ Our King and Saviour^ 
etc. 



'* We may with e?ase 
Obedient be, for if we love we please ; 
Weak though we are, to love is no hard task, 
And love for love is all that heaven does ask." 

Edmund Waller 




lA^ 



NEW YORK: HUNT &= EA TON 

CINCINNATI: CRANSTON &= STOWE 

1S91 




Copyright, 1891, by 

HUNT & EATON, 

New York. 






PREFATORY NOTE. 



The following paragraphs are illustrative 
and explanatory of many precious truths con- 
cerning the faith whereby men are saved, 
the affections which grow out of that faith, 
and the morality which is its necessary fruit. 
They embody many pithy expressions of 
great truths by the inspired penmen, by poets, 
by philosophers, and by Christian writers. 
They were originally written at the request 
of my dear departed friend. Rev. Dr. Brad- 
ford K. Peirce, and appeared through several 
years as editorials in the columns of the Ziojis 
He7'ald^ of which he was then the admired 
and beloved editor. He assured me fre- 
quently, both in person and by letter, that 
these brief notes were spiritually and morally 
helpful to many of his readers, who often 



iv Prefatory Note. 

wrote him to that effect. Their publication 
in this volume is a result of that assurance. 
God having already made them instruments 
of good to many, it is reasonable to hope that 
he will condescend to use them again, " as 
goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of 
assemblies." In this hope they have been 
selected from many others of like character, 
revised, suitable titles have been given to 
each, and they are now commended to devout 
Christian readers with earnest prayer that 
they may be as a light to some who sit in 
the gloom of temptation, a guide to wander- 
ers in the maze of perplexity, a help to the 
weak, and songs in the night to sons and 
daughters of affliction. Go forth, little book, 
into the busy world, and may God help thee 
to fulfill thy mission! Daniel Wise. 

Englewood, N. J. 



CONTENTS, 



I. FAITH. 



I'AGE 

The Spirit of Faith. . 5 

Faith and Love 8 

Certitude of Faith. . . 8 

Little Faith 9 

Desperate Faitli. ... 12 

A Hungry Cry 13 

Spiritual Eye-sight., ig 

Garments of Beauty. 22 
Not an Untrodden 

Path 34 

Source of Spiritual 

Life 35 

Rahab's Scarlet Cord. 43 

Come Forth 46 

Faith Flowing into 

Work 67 

Earnest Seeking for 

Pardon 70 

Life's Cloudy Days. . 73 

Comfortless Despair. 80 

When Fear Perishes. 81 
One's Distance from 

God 85 

Nobdity of Character. 88 



Superficial Profes- 
sions 99 

Hermit Lives 106 

Pictures of Sin 107 

Looking the Wrong 

Way 109 

His Own Star 109 

Imaginary Trouble. . 112 
Finger-posts in Nat- 
ure 116 

Death as Seen by 

Faith 119 

What God Wishes.. 121 

The Egg of Unbelief. 138 
What We Cannot 

See 158 

Irrepressible Men. . . 159 

Fitness to Die 164 

Soul Whiteness 165 

Evil Thoughts 166 

Correct Self-valua- 
tion 168 

Our Whitest Pearls. . 172 

Self-introspection.... 173 



VI 



Contents. 



A False Belief 184 

A Telling Poinl 188 

The Treacherous 

Calm 190 

The Gift and Its 

Giver 191 

Painful Apprehen- 
sion 193 

Pillars or Reeds. . . . 195 

A Precious Ornament. 199 

A Seeming Paradox. 198 

Gnawing Anxiety... 199 

A Quick Temper, . . 201 
The Look of the 

Heart 202 

Saving Faith 210 

Petty Trials 212 

A Prayer of Faith. . . 218 
Atheistic Socialism. . 220 
Bearing Fruit For- 
ever 221 



PAGE 

The Faith-times 222 

A Satanic Sugges- 
tion 231 

A Sacred Bridge. . . . 244 
Luther and Erasmus. 246 
A Foolish Disciple. . 249 
Doing a Great Deed. 252 
Stepping into Light. 265 
Vagrant Thoughts. . 266 
A Priceless Posses- 
sion 268 

A Source of Sin 291 

A Graceful Orna- 
ment 292 

That Precious BK)od . 294 
Painful Struggles... 294 

Sore Vexed 298 

Letting in a Wolf. . . 299 
A Critical Moment. . 300 
Why Does Prayer Dis- 
gust You? 302 



ir. HOPE. 



Alone, yet Not Alone. 1 1 
The Thought of 

Death 32 

Unrecognized Lives. 38 
A Good Man's Rich- 
es 40 



Drawing Checks on 
God's Riches 41 

Summit of Creature 
Perfection 58 

Heavenly Minded- 
ness 64 



Contents. 



vn 



79 

85 
91 
95 



In the Shepherd's 
Bosom 65 

Affliction a Blessing. 66 

A Spoiled Life 69 

Things that Survive. 72 

Guarded from wStum- 
bling 

Sense of Senseless- 
ness 

Happy Old Age. . . . 

A Despairing Cry. . . 

Living in the Present. 103 

A Verbal Contradic- 
tion 105 

An Unclouded Real- 
ity Ill 

The Folded Tent.. . iii 

Heaven's Sweetest 
Pleasure 116 

No Satiety in Heav- 
en 

The Bubble Reputa- 
tion 

What is Your Influ- 
ence? 146 



142 



143 



PAGE 

His Death-warrant. . 149 
The Soul's Seed- 
time 151 

Planning for the 

Future 152 

Not Loath to Die. . . 157 
Greeting the Sunrise. 166 
In Pursuit of Shad- 
ows 171 

A Leap in the Dark. 175 

The Heavenly Rest. 182 

The Day of God... 192 

Sick Unto Death . . . 208 

Moral Loveliness. . . 227 

An Ecstatic Cry. . . . 228 

The Forgotten Dead. 230 

Looking Backward. . 232 

Be Patient 2.0 

The Battle-ground. . 243 

Mount, My Soul. . . . 247 

Within the Gates... 282 

Where is Heaven?.. 286 

An Open Window. . 290 
Our First Moment 

in Heaven 303 



III. LOVE. 

Sweetness of Christ's 
Love 7 

The Prayer of Si- 
lence 9 



Rest in Christ 13 

Struggling After 

Light 22 

Fellowship of Love. 27 



Vlll 



Contents. 



PAGE 

The Secret of the 

Lord , 27 

Union with Christ.. 33 

Reverent Love 48 

The Blessed Life. ... 54 
Unrestrained Emo- 
tion Hurtful 62 

Christian Manners. . 63 
The Enjoyment of 

God 78 

A Grave Mistake. ... 84 

Sour Godliness ..... 95 

The Soft Answer. . . 97 

Thy Darling Child. . i-Oi 
At the Drownings 

point 104 

Fickle as the Wind, no 
Death is Beautiful., 113 
Dethroning Self. ... 117 
The Shame of ^elf. . 124 
A Precious Offer- 
ing 134 

A Dying Maiden's 

Whisper 142 

Divine . Condescen- 
sion 145 

Heaven's Own Sweet- 
ness 156 

Ideal Perfection. . . . 160 
Coke's Persuasive 

Power. 162 

An Ugly Smutch. ... 163 



PACK 

Taking Root Down- 
ward 169 

Forbidden Marriages 170 
Our Rude Bad 

Thoughts 174 

Divine Graciousness. 177 
Deadened, Not 

Healed 178 

A Two-edged Sword 181 
The Ungrateful Man 183 
The Sacrilegious Man 184 
Vexatious Days .... 186 
Madame Guyon's Se- 
cret 194 

Hidden Beauty 199 

Virtue that Shines. . . 202 
The Ideal Home... 205 
Undecided Converts. 206 

A Fairy Ring 211 

From God to God. . . 214 

Moral Beauty 215 

Our Harsh Judg- 
ments 216 

No Other Name. . . . 232 

Near Fire 232 

Eye of God's Word. . 236 
A Garden of Beauty. 239 
Spiritual Beauty.... 240 
Christ's Brightness. . 241 
A False Whisper. . . . 242 
A Necklace of Brill- 
iants 254 



Contents. 



IX 



PAGE I 

Arabian Wisdom. ., . 256 
He is Praying for ^le 256 

Out of Tune 257 

Worth Remembering 259 
Devotion and Good- 
ness 261 

Life's Sublimest Mo- 
ment 262 

Marvelous Love. . . . 263 
Eating One's Own 
Heart 270 



TAGE 

One-eyed Christians. 271 

The Famous Stone. . 273 
The Light of Pure 

Deeds 275 

More God-likeness. . 276 
A Dreaded Scourge. 27S 
The Sweetest W^ord. 2S1 
A Preacher's Power. 2S8 
A Blessed Watch- 
phrase 2S9 

Shine On 295 



IV. D 

Pleading for God's 

Visits 6 

Loathing Sin 7 

Thine Forever 21 

Getting Near to God . 29 
A Special Provi- 
dence 30 

The Heart's Sweetest 

Music 31 

Wrong Affections. . . 32 
The Holy Spirit's 

Tenderness 36 

Christ's Voiceful 

Presence 37 

One Zealous Man. . . 39 

Satanic Owls and Bats 40 

A Wise Man's Plome. 41 



UTY. 

Feeding on God's 

Word 44 

Seeing God in His 

Word 45 

A Child-like Heart. . 47 
The Lifirmitics of 

Friends 49 

A Singular Epitaph. 51 

That Will Do 52 

Bread of Idleness. . . 53 
Ups and Downs. ... 53 
Working Churches. . 55 
Incongruous Affec- 
tions 56 

Not at Home to God. 57 
The Waiting Com- 
forter 58 



Contents. 



I'AGE 

Declining Spiritual- 
ity 59 

Vain Oblations 6i 

Really Fighting Sin. 66 
The Poison of Re- 
venge 67 

The Best Revenge. . 72 

God's Messenger. ... 75 

A Social Bore 75 

Anniversaries of the 

Heart 77 

A Mistaken :^>Ian. . . 7S 

Shunning the Light. 82 

A Good Hater 83 

Ashes in the Moulh. 84 
One Must Work or 

Sin 86 

Book-faith 88 

True Courage 89 

Parting with the 

Bible 93 

A Golden Sentence. 96 

Satan's Devices 98 

Death Forgets Not 

Thee 99 

The Law of Service. 102 

Sin's Avenging Angel 103 

A Shocking Prayer. . 107 
The Highest Point of 

Honor 114 

Sin and the News- 
papers iiS 



PAGE 

Clown or King?. ... 119 

Painful Death-scenes 120 
Our Hearths are 

Altars 122 

Way-side Flowers. . . 124 
A Marvelous Feat.. 126 
The Vulture of Re- 
gret 127 

The Living Worm. . 128 
Dangerous Border- 
lands 129 

Self-ruined 131 

Sad Memories 131 

The Spell of Sin. ... 132 

Pure as Vet 135 

Ruined Palaces 136 

A Disguised King. . 138 

God's Paymasters. . . 139 

Agnostic Folly. . . . , 141 

Trunk Vices 141 

The Greatest of Fol- 
lies 147 

Hell in the Heart. . . 147 

A Mischievous Maxim 148 

Self-blinded Men... 153 

Unhappy Idlers. ... 154 

Tongues of Calumny. 156 

A Hard Hit i6r 

Let Him Alone 176 

False Men 179 

Judging INIen Has- 
tily 179 



Contents. 



XI 



Conduct and Charac- 
ter I Si 

At the Grave's 'M^y- 

gii^ 1S7 

Mercantile Honor. . . 187 

Grieving the Churcii . 1S9 

P^ffects of Self-conceit. 192 

The Dissatistied Man 197 

An Awful Gift 204 

Affrighted Truth. . . 207 

A Manly Utterance. 209 

Praising the Dead. . 213 

Call of the Spirit 2iS 

Haunted Houses. . . 219 

False Lips 221 

Risking One's Moral- 
ity 223 

Hypocritical Prayers. 224 

A Wasted Life 225 

An Insane Theory. . 226 

Broken Vows 234 

Pursuing Day-dreams 236 

An Irreparable Deed 237 

A Life-long Journey. 245 

Infinite Sweetness. . 248 
The Appetite for 

Praise 251 



I'AGE 

An Appalling Spec- 
tacle 253 

Power of Simple 

Words 260 

A Precious Tear- 
drop 264 

A Precept Rarely 

Kept 267 

Profitable yet Un- 
profitable 269 

Malignant Insanity. 272 
Contemptuous Dis- 
pleasure 274 

A Fecund Vice 276 

What a Man is 277 

A Tangling Veil. . . . 278 
A Vain Man's Mu- 
sic 279 

By-path Meadow... 281 

Clean Lips 284 

Satan's Emljassadors. 285 
Bait for Satan's Hook 285 
Insignificant Deeds. 287 
Spiritual Suicide. . . . 290 
A Pregnant Question 296 
Letting in a Wolf. . . 299 
Sin Has Two Faces. 304 



FAITH, HOPE, LOVE, DUTY. 



THE SPIRIT OF NowHERE outside of Holy 
FAITH. ^yj.j^ -g ^Yie spirit of the faith 

whereby one is saved more strongly expressed 
than in the utterances of the Hon of the Ref- 
ormation, Martin Luther. Here is one of 
his cries: " FeeHng thy terrors, O Lord, I 
plunge my conscience in the wounds, blood, 
death, resurrection, and victory of my Saviour, 
Christ. Beside him I will see nothing, I will 
hear nothing." We commend this strong cry 
to any awakened sinner who may read it. 
Sincerely, earnestly uttered, it would bring 
Jesus into his soul and enable him to adopt 
the following beautiful declaration of faith 
victorious: ^' I am covered under the shadow 
of Christ's wing, as is the chicken under the 
wing of the hen, and dwell without any fear 
under that most ample heaven of the forgive- 
ness of sins." Paul Gerhardt, who put the 



6 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

faith of the Reformation into tender and sub- 
lime poetry, sings his own and Luther's trust 
in the following equally clear and telling words: 

*' Death's poison cannot harm me now, 

Thy blood new life bestowing ; 
My shadow from the heat art Thou, 

When the noontide is glowing. 
And when by inward grief oppressed, 
My aching heart in thee shall rest 

As a tired head on the pillow. 
Should storms of persecution toss, 
Firm anchored by thy saving cross, 

My bark rests on the billow." 

PLEADING FOR ^R. JONES VeRY, in his 

GOD'S VISITS, s^veet little poem entitled 
^'The Prayer," pleads for the visit of God to 
his soul in these earnest lines: 

**Come, for I need Thy love 

More than the flowers the dew, or grass the rain ; 
Come gently as thy holy dove ; 

And let me in thy sight rejoice to live again." 

And he closes his poetic prayer with these 
words of faith: 

*' Yes, Thou will visit me ; 

Nor plant nor tree thine eyes delight so well, 
As when, from sin set free. 

My spirit loves with thine in peace to dwell." 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 7 

The poet sings truly. God does take loving 
delight in those who obey him, for hath not 
Jesus said, " If a man love me, he will keep 
my words: and my Father will love him, and 
we will come unto him, and make our abode 
with him." O blessed words ! O strong foun- 
dation for Christian faith I 

SWEETNESS OF There is no sweetness like 
CHRIST'S LOVE. ^^^ sweetness of Christ's love. 
There is no peace like the peace of God. 
There is no presence so precious to a believer 
as the presence of Christ. To live with him 
is life indeed ; to be bereft of him is death. 
Hence this prayer by Keble gives fit expres- 
sion to the feeling of every real Christian: 

'* Abide with me from morn till eve, 
For without Thee I cannot live; 

Abide with me when night is nigh, 
For without thee I dare not die." 

He who would loathe sin 

LOATHING SIN. , i . 

With perfect loathmg must 
contemplate the beauty of holiness as it 
blooms in the life of the pure-souled Son of 
man. The perception of this truth is well 



8 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

expressed by David Gray» a Scotch poet 
whose brief earthly Hfe was only ^' a morning 
with no noon." In one of his ^' Sonnets in 
the Shadow " he sings: 

' ' The gross, adhesive loathsomeness of sin 
Give me to see. Yet, O far more, far more. 
That beautiful purity which the saints adore 

In a consummate paradise within 

The veil. O Lord, upon my soul bestow 
An earnest of that purity here below." 

FAITH AND Faith does not give birth 
LOVE. ^Q ^YiQ love in which it trusts; 

. it only lays hold upon it. When man*s faith 
is feeble heaven's love remains absolute and 
immeasurable as ever. It is still an everlast- 
ing love, wooing men to make it their hiding- 
place from danger, their banqueting-house in 
which to satisfy their spiritual hunger. There 
is no limit to that love but man's unbelief, 
and it flows, an unintermittent stream, to 
every trusting heart. 

certitude of OisiE great element of power 
FAITH. {j^ ^]^Q apostles was the certi- 

tude with which they taught the great fact 



Faith, Hope, Loye, Duty, 9 

of the resurrection of their Lord, They 
were absolutely certain on that point. They 
had seen him, heard him, touched his hands, 
until they had no lingering doubt No won- 
der, therefore, that they impressed their 
knowledge on the minds of their hearers Vv'ith 
such force that it gave birth in them to a 
faith which the Holy Spirit made self-demon- 
strative by causing it to bring forth the fruit 
of righteousness, peace, and joy. To be suc- 
cessful the modem preacher needs a similar 
certainty. He must have arrived at a ^' cer- 
titude from which, as from a rock, he can 
draw up his hearers from among the waves 
of perplexity and unrest." But such a certi- 
tude can be gained by nothing less than a 
faith which lives among the unseen things of 
the spiritual world. If doubt and a carnal 
mind preach in the pulpit there will surely 
be spiritual death in the pew. 

THE PRAYER ^'^^ mystics recommcnd the 
OF SILENCE, practice of '' the prayer of si- 
lence; " that is, of a state of mind so exalted, 



lo Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

so rapt, that it breathes in strong, unspoken 
desire ^^the prayer which comprehends 
all other prayers " — Thy will be done! This 
silent breathing of the soul after God is a 
blessed exercise of the heart, provided it be 
not carried to such excess as to exclude vocal 
prayer. The late Dean Stanley, who was far 
from being a mystic, observed that " by acts 
of silent goodness, by a humble faith that 
does not express itself in speech, the presence 
of God is often as surely indicated as in the 
actual calling on his name in prayer and 
praise." Charles Wesley describes this sweet 
frame of mind in these lines: 

*' O'erwhelmed with Thy stupendous grace, 

1 shall not in thy presence move ; 
But breathe unutterable praise, 

And rapturous awe and silent love." 

Little faith may be as truly 

LITTLE FAITH. 

faith as great faith, just as the 
light of dawn is as truly sunlight as is the 
light of noon. Hence though great faith is 
desirable and attainable, yet none should de- 
spise a little faith. To a lady whose trust 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. ii 

was feeble. Dr. Chalmers wrote: '' Let this 
thought, that God cannot lie, keep in conscious 
safety the heart of every one who looketh to 
Jesus. They who look shall be saved. The 
sun is often faintly seen through a cloud, but 
the spectator may be no less looking to him 
than when he is seen in undiminished efful- 
gence. It is not to him who sees Christ 
brightly that the promises are made, but 
to him who looks to Christ." Therefore 
let him whose faith is feeble be of good 
cheer. Faith saves; and his faith, being 
genuine, is sure to grow. 

ALONE YET V\'hen a man stands on the 
NOT ALONE, summit of threescore and ten 
years, looking backward toward the days of 
his early manhood and recalling the compan- 
ions who started with him in the years that 
are no more, he is apt to be shocked and sad- 
dened by a feeling of loneliness. ^^ So many 
gone, so few left ! " he exclaims. Yes, the 
images of his departed friends rise before him 
as an army of shadows. Those who remain 



12 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

look like the skeleton of a regiment at the 
close of a long campaign. And then, when the 
black-bordered letter or the tell-tale news- 
paper brings tidings that this or that one of 
the late remaining few is also gone, he feels 
as the poet did when he sadly sung, 

"Death's lightnings strike to right and left of me, 

And like a ruined wall the world around me 
Crumbles away, and I am left alone." 

Yet not alone, for the Master of death is still 
with him. His old friends, too, though gone, 
are not lost. They draw his thoughts to 
heaven, where they are waiting to bid him 
welcome — to that heaven now seen to be so 
near that he becomes more profoundly con- 
vinced than ever that, as the dying Jeremy 
Taylor said, '* The whole business of life is 
preparation for death." 

DESPERATE When a much-temptcd lady 

FAITH. ^y^g struggling for the light of 

faith she said in her heart, ^' If Jesus, in 

whom I trust, bore all my sins in his own 

body on the tree, then God cannot be merciful 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 13 

and just to send my soul to hell; I shall never 
go there ! " This faith saved her. With its 
exercise the scales fell from her eyes. She 
saw Jesus. Peace and love filled her heart. 
Her faith was desperate, but it conquered. 

REST IN ^' ^ WILL givc you rest," is 

CHRIST. ^Y^Q promise of Jesus to the 
weary-hearted. Rest from the pangs of guilt, 
from the tumult of passion, from the cravings 
of soul-hunger, from the gnawings of dissatis- 
faction with the results of earthly good. Rest 
in Christ is happiness. Our divine Christ, 
being the author and end of all created things, 
can alone give the repose which follows per- 
fect satisfaction to every creature who will 
lean his aching head on his infinite breast. 
Therefore, O tried soul, let your heart cry 
out, ^' O Jesus, give me rest! " 

A HUNGRY The extreme simplicity of 
^^^* faith as a condition of salva- 

tion is not seldom a source of stumbling to 
strong minds; but it is a marvelous mercy to 
the mass of mankind. Neither reason nor 



14 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

imagination can conceive of any other act 
that is so surely within the power of all. It 
is as possible to the unlettered barbarian as 
to the cultivated philosopher. George Her- 
bert, in his quaint poem on Faith, says: 

" If bliss had been in art or strength, 

None but the wise or strong had gained it ; 

Where now, by faith, all arms are of a length 
One size doth all conditions fit. 

** A peasant may believe as much 

As a great clerk, and reach the highest stature. 
Thus dost thou make proud knowledge bend and 
crouch, 

While grace fills up uneven nature." 

In the same poem he illustrates faith by vari- 
ous figures of speech. He was ^'hungry and 
had no meat,'* he says, but by believing he 
had a delicious feast he did eat and was filled. 
Again, he was lame and needed an " out- 
landish root." He believed that root was 
given him, and was cured. Once more he 
sings : 

" I owed thousands, and much more; 

I did believe that I did nothing owe, 
And lived accordingly ; my creditor 

Believes so too, and lets me go." 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 15 

"O, for faith, much faith, and still more 
faith! " should be the hungry cry of every 
earnest heart. 

THE SPIRITUAL Healthy people never 
APPETITE. grow weary of eating and 
drinking every day, because nature daily re- 
vives their appetite. But for this, as Pascal 
suggests, they would weary of eating and 
drinking. In like manner we should weary of 
spiritual thoughts and enjoyments if the Holy 
Spirit did not, by his quickening influence, re- 
vive our appetite for them. What nature does 
for the bodily appetite the Spirit does for the 
spiritual. Hence if one lives in constant fel- 
lowship with that Holy Comforter one will 
never lose that hungering and thirsting after 
righteousness which the Master pronounced 
*^ blessed," because it is sure to be gratified. 
*' They shall be filled " — filled with divine 
love, with every human virtue, with purity. 

STEADFAST ^^ STEADFAST faith produces 
FAITH. g^ frame of mind habitually joy- 

ous, for the reason that its eye is constantly 



i6 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

fixed, not on itself nor on the human side 
of life, but on the '^mercies of God" as 
flowing like a perennial stream from the love 
of Christ. Chr}^sostom gave unique, yet 
beautiful, expression to this thought when he 
said: "All times are a festival to the Chris- 
tian through the exceeding abundant mercy 
conferred upon him. For what blessings 
have not been given thee ? The Son of God 
hath delivered thee from death, he hath 
called thee unto the kingdom. How then 
canst thou who receivest so many good 
things neglect to celebrate thy whole life as 
a festival ? Let no one therefore be cast 
down on account of poverty, or sickness, 
or persecution; for we live in a continual 
festival.** 

ROOT OF TRUE The difference between gen- 
viRTUE. yj^g virtue, which has its roots 
in the divine presence dwelling in the heart, 
and the empty conventional virtue which is 
rooted in selfishness, is beautifully illustrated 
in these lines from Shakespeare: 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 17 

'The canker-blossoms have full as deep a dye 

As the perfumed tincture of the roses. 
Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly 

When summer breath their masked bud discloses ; 
But, for their virtue only is their show, 

They live unwooed, and unrespected fade. 
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so, 

Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odors made." 

How true it is that even among men nothing 
but sterling worth wins lasting respect! And 
at the bar of heaven's judgment all sham vir- 
tue will be covered with everlasting shame 
and contempt. 

THE JOYOUS The life of a believer is a 
LIFE. cheerful, joyous life. There 

may be seasons when nervous affections, ex- 
traordinary trials, or unusually fierce tempta- 
tions will temporarily depress him, but he 
cannot be habitually gloomy or sad. A\Tier- 
ever sadness does reign over a Christian's life, 
there must be some defect either in his creed 
or his loyalty to Christ. There is so much 
in the truth which is the root of faith to beget 
gladness, such an exhibition of God's infinite 
love to man in the incarnation of Christ, such 



i8 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

rich consolation flowing from the indweUing 
Comforter, such causes for gratitude in the 
mercies of his daily life, such visions of 
beauty evoked by the promises of coming 
glory, that one who really embraces God by 
faith can scarcely prevent his heart from 
bubbling over with joy. Paul gave the key- 
note of a true Christian life when he said to 
the church at Philippi, ^' Rejoice in the Lord 
alway; and again I say. Rejoice! " And Lu- 
ther echoed this sweetest bird-note when he 
said to the first-born sons of the Reformation, 

** Dear Christian people, all rejoice, 
Each soul with joy upspringiiig ; 

Pour forth one song with heart and voice. 
With love and gladness singing. 

Give thanks to God, our Lord above, 

Thanks for his miracle of love ! 
Dearly he hath redeemed us." 

LOVE AND The emotion of love in the 
KNOWLEDGE. Christian's heart is a rill that 
flows out of his knowledge of God, ^' This 
is eternal life," said Jesus, " to know God 
and his Son Jesus Christ." Hence he who 
would put forth the act of faith must not look 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 19 

at himself, but at God as self-revealed in 
Jesus Christ. Richard Baxter well says: 
*' For every thought one casts downwardly 
upon himself he should cast ten upwardly and 
outwardly upon Jesus and upon the glorious 
truths of the Gospel." Look steadily, there- 
fore, at Jesus, O seeking soul, as the propi- 
tiation for thy sins, as the expression of his 
Father's infinite love for thee, and even while 
thou lookest, lo! thy heart will swell with a 
responsive love for him, and thou wilt be 
ready to exclaim with the poet, 

" O awful joy I O life divine ! 

O bliss too great, too full ! 
Earth, man, heaven, angels, all are thine, 

And thou art God's, my soul ! " 

SPIRITUAL Every man who beholds 
EYE-SIGHT. . Christ with the eye of faith is 
transformed into his glorious image. He ex- 
periences in part that mystic transformation 
which is to be completed when Christ '^ shall 
appear;" when, as John says, "we shall be 
like him; for we shall see him as he is." Yet 
such is the effect of reigning sin that an un- 



20 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

renewed man, instead of being charmed and 
attracted, is pained when he looks at Christ. 
He turns away in disgust from the Saviour's 
pure Gospel and from his glorious person. 
Alas for such a man! In rejecting Christ he 
refuses the only means by which his man- 
hood can grow into completeness. Living 
without Christ he is a fruitless tree, a flower- 
less plant, a cloud without water, a wander- 
ing star, a homeless child for whom " is re- 
served the blackness of darkness forever." 
O strange infatuation! that keeps him from 
going to the Redeemer who waits to give him 
rest, peace, fruitfulness, spiritual beauty, light, 
and a home in his Father's house. Still 
more strange is that compassionate love 
which, instead of inflicting instant punish- 
ment, waits, woos, and entreats, that obstinate 
sinner, ever saying, " You will not come unto 
me, that you might have life." Yet note it 
well, O unbelieving man! Your persistent 
unbelief may wear out even his marvelous 
patience, and when your destiny is finally 
fixed you may in your despair hear him say- 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 21 

ing, " Behold, your house is left unto you 
desolate! " To which lamentation over your 
fate you will be self-moved to respond, *' Yea, 
and that, too, by my own mad unbelief." 

THINE FOR- " ^ ^^^ thine forever," is the 
EVER. confession every new-born 

soul makes to his beloved Redeemer, with 
whom he has just entered into a ///>-/^;/^ cove- 
nant. He knows full well that his Lord makes 
no limited covenant with any soul, nor has he 
himself any thought of being a short-time dis- 
ciple, ^* Thine forever! " is the language of 
his love, and, it being so, he withdraws at 
once from all his old sins and from his sinful 
companions who will not join him in his 
Lord's service. As Cortez in Mexico burnt 
his ships to cut off all means of retreat, so he, 
if earnest and sincere, dissolves every possi- 
ble connection with his old sins, resolved to 
hold fast to his covenant watchword until he 
enters heaven, where he will cry in rapturous 
bliss, " Now I am forever with my Lord! " 
But the convert who hesitates to do this, 



22 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty, 

secretly thinking that he may possibly return 
to his evil ways, presumes, and is like Lot's 
wife, who, turning to look on her burning 
home, was lost! 

GARMENTS OF ^HE Jewish high-priest, 
BEAUTY. when he ministered within 
the Holy of Holies, arrayed himself in gar- 
ments of '^beauty and glory," kept sacred for 
that especial use. Alluding to those gar- 
ments, David says, '^ Worship the Lord in the 
beauty of holiness." And this every Chris- 
tian does when he approaches the throne of 
grace clothed in *' the righteousness of God 
which is by faith of Jesus Christ upon all 
that beUeve." At that throne the song of all 
believers is, '^ Unto him that loved us, and 
washed us from our sins in his own blood, 
and hath made us kings and priests unto God, 
... to him be glory and dominion forever 
and ever." 

STRUGGLING ^RT thou Struggling, O man, 
AFTER LIGHT, ^ftcr brighter light, greater 
Strength, and sweeter rest in Christ ? And art 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 23 

thou discouraged because, as thy foolish heart 
falsely tells thee, God does not answer thy 
prayers? Not answering thy prayers? 
What then mean these strugglings, aspira- 
tions, and questionings vdiich give character 
to thy present experiences ? Whence come 
they but from his movements on thy soul ? 
What are they but evidences that he is act- 
ively guiding thee from thyself to himself ? 
And what are those gleams of light which 
occasionally give thee sudden insight into, and 
enlarged conception of, some great truth but 
partly understood before ? God not guiding 
thee ^ Put away the unbelieving thought; 
give him thy hand as thy child gives his to 
thee; commit thyself wholly to his keeping, 
and be persuaded that what you give to him 
he will faithfully keep unto the glorious end 
of thy pilgrimage and for evermore. Thus 
believing, thy heart, instead of complaining, 
will sing, 

" Jesus, the fragrance of the heart, 

The only fount of truth thou art. 
Who dost true life and joy impart. 

Surpassing all desire." 



24 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

THE HOLY The testimony of a man's 
LIFE. |^£g jg vastly better evidence 

of the purity of his character than even ecsta- 
sies in his last moments. As a question of 
fact many very holy men are not favored with 
visions of glory on their death-beds. Some, 
indeed, approach the gate of death through 
dense mental clouds, and by a path so filled 
with the sharpest thorns of physical disease 
that 

" Sorrow is in their souls ; they scarce perceive, 
But by the pains they suffer, that they Jive," 

The dying hours of John Walsh, one of Wes- 
ley's most learned and devoted helpers, were 
thus agonizing. Extreme pain, fierce tempta- 
tions, trying environments, forced his great 
soul to the verge of despair. His biographer 
says, with pardonable exaggeration: 

•'His agonizing soul sweat blood ; 

With Christ he fainted on the tree, 
And cried, in death, ' My God, my God, 

Ah ! why hast thou forsaken me ? ' " 

Yet he was not really forsaken, for, as his end 
approached, he was cheered by a heavenly 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 25 

sunburst which filled his soul with ravishing 
delight and moved him to cry, " He is come ! 
He is come ! My Beloved is mine, and I am 
his — his forever ! " Thus shouting, his soul 
ascended to the realm eternal. But none that 
knew him living would have doubted of his 
salvation had he died under the cloud instead 
of in that sunburst of spiritual glory ! His 
holy life, apart from his dying words, told 
the story of his safety in and after death. 

BETTER THAN One does not need to study 
MONEY. ^i^Q ethjcs of Christ to learn 
that a pure character is worth more than 
money. Aristotle, though only a heathen 
philosopher, knew that. He is credited with 
saying: '' Make money if you will, but let it 
be your second object, not your first. En- 
deavor first to be good, and money enough 
will follow." Yet many modern Christians 
to whom a greater than Aristotle is constantly 
saying with divine authority, " Seek first the 
kingdom of God and his righteousness, and 
all these things shall be added unto you,*' 



26 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

are found offering the purity of their charac- 
ters as a sacrifice on the filthy altars of mam- 
mon. How they commit this self-destructive 
crime is well shown by Shakespeare in the 
speech which he puts into the mouth of Lady 
Macbeth, whose husband stands shrinking 
from the crime he must commit before he can 
place the crown of Scotland on his own head. 

She says to him, 

*' Thou wouldst be great 
Without the illness should attend it. What thou 

wouldst highly, 
That wouldst thou holily ; wouldst not play false, 
And yet wouldst wrongly win." 

These lines lay bare the heart of the man who 
through covetous desire stains his life with 
violations of the trusts reposed in him by his 
friends. At the start he intends to win the 
golden prize "holily.'* He has no intention 
"to play false;" yet by constantly feeding 
his covetous desire he finally gives it power 
over his dread of guilt, and consents to win 
the wealth within his reach by doing at last 
the wrong he feared to do at first. -Let him 
who would escape this wreck of his purity 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 27 

avoid the first aspirations of covetous desire by 
giving Christ the first place in his affections. 

FELLOWSHIP "^^^ fellowship of the be- 
OFLOVE. lie^gj. ^y[^^ the Father of 

spirits is a fellowship of love, of which re- 
vealed truth is the medium. On its divine 
side is the Holy Spirit impressing on the man's 
heart the fact of God's love as shown in the 
gift of his Son. On the man's side this amaz- 
ing fact is so taken into his life by faith that 
it begets a responsive love, which exclaims, ^^ I 
love thee, O Lord, because thou didst first 
love me ! " In this fellowship the believer's 
life develops into aspirations after purity, and 
thus love becomes, in the words of Bailey, 

*' The heart's deep gulf stream, that with warm wave 
Sun- gilded, soothes the abysses of our life, 
and makes us feel. 

In loving God, the soul re-seeks its source, 
Being to being answering, name to name." 

THE SECRET OF " The Secret of the Lord 
THE LORD. ig ^yi^Y^ ^}^gj^ ^Yia.t fear him," 

yet none in the busy crowd among Avhom 
they move in the noisy street know what is 



2S Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

passing in their hearts. An American citizen 
in a foreign city, seeing the meteor flag of his 
native land floating at the mast-head of a 
ship, is inwardly moved, by the associations it 
revives, to patriotic feelings, to emotions of 
love, to fond anticipations of his return to the 
joys and repose of his fireside. But of these 
secret thoughts the people about him know 
nothing. To them the flag of his country is 
but as one flag among many others. They 
meddle not with the secret joys it kindles 
within his swelling breast. It is even so with 
the secret of the Tord in a good man's breast. 
He walks the streets like other men. Yet 
while their thoughts are of things visible and 
earthly his are of God and things unseen. 
He sees God in every thing about him. God 
is communing with him, feasting him on holy 
thoughts, quickening his spiritual aspirations, 
comforting him with assurances of his sonship 
and with visions of his incorruptible inheri- 
tance. Happy therefore, and safe also, is he 
who possesses the secret of the Lord's pres- 
ence ! But inasmuch as this priceless secret is 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 29 

offered as a free gift to all men is it not more 
than folly for any man to slight that gracious 
offer ? Busy searching for a grain of sand, 
such a one rejects the proffer of an imper- 
ishable crown. 

GETTING NEAR ^i' ^^ easy to Say to our be- 
TO GOD. io^.e(i Redeemer, " Thy will 
be done," when we stand with him on the 
Mount of Transfiguration; but who that is 
groaning with him in the gloomy garden of 
suffering can say with Keble, 

" O Lord, my God, do thou thy holy will — 

I will be still — 
Will not stir, lest I forsake thine arm 

And break the charm 
Which lulls me, clinging to my father's breast, 

In perfect rest." 

Yet, as Jesus in his agony comes nearer to 
our hearts than when in his transfiguration, 
so we get nearer to him in submission to trial 
than in our happier moments. Pray, there- 
fore, O child of sorrow, for perfect submis- 
sion to thy fiery trial ! There is no rest for 
thee but in thy consent to cry with Christ, 
''Thy will be done!" 



30 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

A SPECIAL '' Sue was a special provi- 
PROVIDENCE, (ience to me," wrote the late 
Earl of Shaftesbury concerning his father's 
housekeeper, Maria Millas. He explains his 
meaning by stating that this good woman had 
almost the entire care of him until he was 
seven years old, when she died. Yet such 
was the impression she made upon him in 
those few years that toward the close of his 
truly noble life this greatly good man said: 
" I must trace, under God, very much, per- 
haps all, of the duties of my later life to her 
precepts and her prayers." What a striking 
testimony is this confession to the fidelity of 
an obscure Christian woman ! And what a 
grand result it wrought ! As is well-known, 
Shaftesbury's nobility of birth, represented 
by his earl's coronet, when placed beside the 
moral grandeur of his character, was but as 
a glow-worm to a star. Through his long 
life his supreme devotion to works of ben- 
evolence gave him an undisputed right to say, 
" Write me as one that loves his fellow-men." 

His deeds gave light, hope, comfort, and ele- 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 31 

vation to many thousands who were born 
heirs to an inheritance of poverty and woe. 
And those deeds were the precious fruits of 
the influence of a servant in his father's house- 
hold. What a splendid star that good earl 
will be in the crown of the glorified !Maria 
Millas, his mother's servant ! And how forci- 
bly does Maria's success say to ever}^ woman 
who has the care of a child, " Make thyself a 
* special providence ' to this child ! It is clay; 
be thou its potter. Mold it for God! " 

As harp-strings refuse to dve 

THE HEART'S . 

SWEETEST forth their best and sweetest 

MUSIC. . ., , uii 1 

music until they are firmly 
struck and tightly bound,** 

" So the hearts of Christians owe 
Each its sweetest, deepest strain 

To the pressure firm of woe, 
And the tension tight of pain." 

Therefore, O thou who art suffering under 
divine chastenings which are not joyous but 
grievous, be of good cheer, seeing that these 
pains and woes patiently borne will bring 
forth the '' peaceable fruit of righteousness." 



32 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

They are seeds destined to bring forth flowers 
whose beauty and odors will delight the Lord 
thy King. 

WRONG Wrong affections, or love 

AFFECTIONS, f^r things forbidden, steal 
into the heart like sneak-thieves into dwell- 
ings. Like hypocrites they whisper flattering 
words to the passions and desires, asking, not 
for permanent possession, but only for tem- 
porary lodgings. But, once admitted, they 
soon supplant the disciple's love for his Mas- 
ter and rob him of his faith, love, peace, joy, 
and hope. Knowing this, the believer should 
give heed to that divine voice which ever 
warns him, saying, "Watch and pray, lest ye 
enter into temptation ! " 

THE THOUGHT When the dart of death 
OF DEATH. suddenly pierces friend after 
friend, and a busy Christian is thereby forci- 
bly reminded that the last enemy may be 
tracking his own footsteps, he, being in the 
full heyday of bustling life, may for the mo- 
ment shudder at the thought. But why need 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. ^^ 

a good man fear the fatal stroke which cuts 

the cord of life ? The blow will only set him 

free to go 

" To that distant land 
For whose sweet waters he has pined with thirst.*' 

And why need he shrink from laying down 
his burden to-day any more than in some 
future hour ? He has but to turn his thoughts 
awhile from the busy present to the glorious 
life that bides his crossing the mystic stream, 
to lose his reluctance to die now, and to feel, 
as Paul did, "a desire to depart and be with 
Christ, which is far better " than toiling 
longer amid the hubbub of this whirligig 
world. For a good man " to live is Christ, to 
die is gain." 

UNION WITH KvERV belicver is united 
CHRIST. ^^.j^j^ Christ as a branch is to 
a vine. This is Christ's own statement, and 
cannot be gainsaid. No Christian can even 
desire to deny it, since his own purity depends 
on his union with his divine Master. Says a 
living writer: ** Sin, which is the separation 
of the soul from God, is abolished by the very 



54 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

hypothesis of reunion with God in Christ; 
and with the abolition of sin there is no place 
found for the law and death; they vanish with 
sin itself. Union with Christ is not the exclu- 
sive privilege of souls departed; it is the 
power of our endless life brought into the life 
that now is." Hence he who is one with 
Christ can sing with the poet, 

" Love perfecteth what it begins ; 

Thy power doth save me from my sins ; 

Thy grace upholdeth me. 
This life of trust, how glad, how sweet ! 
My need and thy great fullness meet, 

And I have all in thee." 

When one who loves Christ 

NOT AN UN- 
TRODDEN thinks of death he is recon- 

PATH. 

ciled to the struggles which 
must precede the getting rid of one's mortal 
coil by recollecting that to die is " to be 
with Christ." Such a one knows that it is 

" His royal will 
That w^here he is there should his followers be. 
Death only lies between. A gloomy path ! 
Made yet more gloomy by our coward fears, 
But not untrod or tedious." 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 35 

Not untrodden , but passed over by the Master's 
feet ! Why, then, should the behever fear to 
die ? Faith makes his life dehghtful, but to 
him ** death is gain." Thou art welcome, 
therefore, O death, when thy Master sends 
thee to lead me home ! 

After exhaustino; their skill 

SOURCE OF ^ 

SPIRITUAL in efforts to prove the theory 

LIFE. 

of- spontaneous generation 
the materialists of our day have been com- 
pelled to concede that " life invariably comes 
from life." As noted by a recent writer, this 
law of nature has a striking parallel in the law 
of spiritual regeneration as stated in these 
words of the Master of life: "He that hath 
the Son hath life, and he that hath not the 
Son hath not life." Hence the Scripture 
theory of regeneration cannot be objected to 
as unscientific in its method. Nevertheless, 
the spiritual life, being in itself objectionable 
to the carnal mind, will still be refused by 
men who spend their intellectual strength in 
vain efforts to exclude God from both the 



^6 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

human soul and the material universe. But, 
to men who know that no man truly lives 
until his life is hid with Christ in God, the 
fact that faith in Christ produces spiritual 
life in the man as invariably as every herb, 
tree, and living creature bring forth *' after 
their kind " is a source of substantial joy. 
Blessed be God ! Whosoever believeth on 
the Son hath everlasting life. Thus do 
spiritual facts demonstrate the law of the 
Spirit, by whose indwelling our spiritual Hfe 
is begotten and maintained. 

The Scripture which says, 

THE HOLY ^ ^ ' 

SPIRIT'S TEN- '' Grieve not the Holy Spirit," 

DERNESS. . ,. 

implies an inexpressible ten- 
derness in the nature of that divine Com- 
forter — a reluctance to resent and punish a 
wrong, but a sensitiveness to one's wrong- 
doing which makes him recoil from it, as the 
sensitive plant shrinks beneath "the touch of 
a rude hand." Did men. Christian men, 
especially, appreciate the infinite value to 
them of the work of the Holy Spirit, they 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 37 

would strain every nerve to suppress each 
thought, feeling, word, and act that grieves 
him. They would steadfastly resolve never 
to grieve the Holy Spirit. 

That the unseen Saviour 

CHRIST'S 

voicEFUL does speak to his disciples is 

PRESENCE. , , . , ' , r 

a fact to w^hich myriads of 
living men can testify. It is also a fact that 
multitudes who wear the outward badges of 
discipleship do not consciously hear his voice. 
And this, not because he does not speak to 
them, but because they do not listen. Busied 
with visible things, constantly attentive to the 
voices of men and of earthly affairs, they do 
not turn aside from the activities of daily life 
and hearken with earnest desire and fervent 
prayer to hear what he is waiting to say to 
them. Unhappy men! Who can estimate their 
losses, caused by their refusal to step aside 
daily into some hidden nook or silent closet, 
there to spend a few quiet minutes with God 
until he breathes 

** A voice of spiritual presence to their souls, 
A voiceful presence o'er their listening souls !* 



33 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

Happily, these losses, though they cannot be 
repaired, can be made to cease. The much- 
forbearing Jesus will yet speak if they will 
but listen, since he is ever calling his '* sheep by 
name; " and if they hearken they will assur- 
edly hear his beloved voice. 

UNRECOG- Vaughan, in the green tufts 
NiZED LIVES. q£ j^-^Qgg ^^^ [^ |-|^^ green 

leaves of the chickweed which preserve their 
color and flourish in sheltered nooks during 
the bleak winds of an English winter, finds types 
of those pure but unrecognized lives which 
are spent apart from cities and other busy 
haunts of men. Apostrophizing these hidden 
nurslings of the wintry months, he sings, 

" Dear secret greenness, nursed below 
Tempest and wind and winter nights ! 

Vex not that but one sees thee grow ; 
That One made all these lesser lights." 

And " that One " has himself assured those 
humble ones whose works of mercy and pious 
struggles for godlikeness are unseen of men 
that his eye beholds them lovingly, remem- 
bers their hidden acts, and intends to give 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 39 

them a full reward in the hereafter. It is he 
who whispers in the ear of faith, " Thy Father 
which seeth in secret shall himself reward 
thee openly." How comforting the thought 
of his recognition ! How gracious his prom- 
ised reward — a reward to be measured, not by 
the merit of the "little one " to whom it shall 
be given, but by his own infinite liberality ! 

ONE ZEALOUS ^^HEN Chrysostom sought 
^^^' to quicken the zeal of his 

church at Antioch he remarked that, " One 
man inspired with holy zeal sufficeth to amend 
an entire people." Perhaps this proposition 
needs qualification. Nevertheless, the history 
of the Church contains so many instances of 
great spiritual results accomplished by indi- 
vidual effort that every man whose heart is 
ablaze with love to Christ has ample ground 
for expecting that, if his efforts are propor- 
tional to his love, and guided by wisdom, the 
fire which consumes him will spread through 
his Church as a single burning tree often sets 
fire to a large forest. 



40 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

A GOOD MAN'S ^o truly good man can be 
RICHES. really poor and friendless. 
His lot may be lowly, his sphere narrow, his 
garments threadbare, his income small. Nev- 
ertheless, being Christ's disciple, he is rich. He 
is still the man of whom Wordsworth sung: 

'* Hath he not always treasures, always friends, 

The good great man ? Three treasures — life and light. 

And calm thoughts, regular as infant's breath ; 
And three firm friends, more sure than day and 
night — 

Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death." 

SATANIC OWLS What the screeches of the 
AND BATS. night-owl and the flight of 
intrusive bats about his chamber are to one 
who cannot sleep, vile, blasphemous thoughts 
suggested by the Evil One are to the soul in 
its moments of fierce temptation. To combat 
them one needs to turn one's thoughts to 
Christ, especially to that infinite condescen- 
sion which leads him to find delight in one's 
feeblest efforts to resist the devil and to seek 
rest at his feet. " There is nothing," says a 
pious writer, *^ like the music of heaven for 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 41 

silencing those owls and bats and noisome 
creatures that Satan stirs up from the dark 
caverns within." And w^hat is the music of 
heaven to a tempted disciple but the voice of 
Jesus whispering to him in tones of the ten- 
derest affection, " Come unto me, all ye that 
labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give 
you rest." 

A WISE MAN'S John Marston says: ^^A 
HOME. ^yjgg man's home is where- 

soe'er he's wise; " which, being interpreted, 
means that when a wise man ceases to do 
and speak wisely he ceases to be a wise man. 
" Wheresoe'er " he acts wisely he is a wise 
man, but when he turns to folly he is a fool. 
To deserve a reputation for wisdom one must 
never act foolishly. 

'' You seem despondent. 

DRAWING ^ 

CHECKS ON Your face is shrouded in 

GOD'S RICHES. , ^^., , , . ^„ 

gloom. \v hat has happened ? 
said a devout class-leader to a young business 
friend one day. '^AVell," replied the gentle- 
man, " I am more cast down than I have 
4 



42 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

ever been before. My business is very dull. 
My father is obliged to give up his position. 
My mother, as you know, is helpless, and I 
have to support them both. My wife, too, is 
an invalid, with little prospect of ever being 
any thing else. My income is too small to 
pay my expenses. Do you wonder that I am 
disheartened? " ** You must make God your 
banker," replied the class-leader. " He cares 
for you, and, as Paul says, * He shall fulfill 
every need of yours according to his riches 
in glory in Christ Jesus.' Think of that, my 
brother — your every need to be met from 
his riches ! Cannot you draw checks on 
those boundless riches ? He will assuredly 
honor them up to the measure of your need, 
great as that is. He will raise you up friends. 
He will open a way for you to pass • out of 
your threatening adversity into such paths of 
prosperity as are best suited to your needs." 
These wise words touched the young mer- 
chant's heart; his eyes glistened as he mur- 
mured, "His riches in glory! Wonderful! 
I will draw upon them by faith." And then, 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 43 

going away comforted, he fought his troubles 
with fresh energy. His way grew brighter 
and he prospered abundantly. Art thou em- 
barrassed, cast down, almost in despair, O 
Christian reader ? Take that precious word 
of Paul and feast your tried heart upon it. 
Mark it well! It is God who says even to 
you, through Paul, '^ He shall fulfill every need 
of yours according to his riches in glory." Is 
it not enough to give you good cheer ? 

RAHAB'S ^^^ ^^^ inhabitants of Jeri- 

SCARLETCORD. cho the ^^ scarlet cord " which 
was visible in Rahab's window had no sig- 
nilicance whatever. To Rahab it was the sym- 
bol of her hidden faith in the promise of the 
spies that she should be saved from the terri- 
ble destruction which was about to over- 
whelm that devoted city. What that scarlet 
cord was to Rahab the sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper is to the Christian believer. To men 
of the world the sacramental bread and wine 
have little significance; they do not discern 
their hidden meaning; but to believers they 



44 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

are symbols of that broken body and that 
crimson blood in which his clinging faith 
sees deliverance from everlasting death and 
an assured possession of everlasting life, 
" The secret of the Lord is with them that 
fear him/' 

FEEDING ON ^^ ^er autobiography the 
GOD'S WORD, late Frances R. Havergal 
says that after giving up her soul to the Sav- 
iour, " For the first time my Bible was sweet 
to me, and the first passage which I distinctly 
remember reading in a new and glad light 
was the fourteenth and following chapters of 
St. John's gospel. I read them feeling how 
wondrously loving and tender they were, and 
that now I too might share in their beauty 
and comfort." In this statement we have the 
secret of that lady's symmetrical piety and 
eminent usefulness. As she began her spirit- 
ual life by feeding it on the divine word, so 
she continued. She made it her daily bread. 
By reading it constantly^ by meditating upon 
it, by implicitly believing it, by praying for 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 45 

light upon it, and by claiming its promises as 
her own, she learned to see and to know God 
and to possess in very large measure that 
" eternal life " which is the product of know- 
ing him. Hers was, therefore, a scriptural 
piety. Her faith pushed its roots deep into 
God's word. And whosoever wishes to be 
truly and actively pious must, like her, nour- 
ish his heart with Scripture truth, since no 
Christian ever did, or ever can, attain deep 
piety who does not learn to sip sweetness 
from God's words as bees suck honey from 
the flowers of the field. 

SEEING GOD IN ^^'^^' ^^ the word of God 
HIS WORD. Q£|.gj^ j.g^(^ without spiritual 

profit? Is it not because the reader ap- 
proaches it in an indifferent or languid state 
of mind ? His spiritual perceptions are 
asleep; therefore he fails to discern God in 
his word. Forgetting that it is with the word 
as with nature, that 

" We receive but what we give, 

And in our life alone does nature live," 



46 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

he does not bring to the reading of the book 
that reverential spirit of inquiry, that earnest 
effort to discern God, that child-like faith on 
which the manifestation of God to the human 
mind is conditioned. The book seems dead 
to him because he is himself dead, or nearly 
so. But let him read it as listening to what 
God is saying to him, and praying, " Open 
thou mine eyes! " and he will surely " behold 
wondrous things " shining from the sacred 
page. 

There are occasions when 

COME FORTH! 

the best are tempted to say 
of themselves, " All that is good, noble, and 
spiritual is dying out of our natures. Our 
faith is feeble, our hope failing, our energy 
decaying, and the darkness of the second death 
is coming over us.'* And that dreaded death 
would overwhelm them were it not that, as 
Christ appeared before the tomb of Lazarus, 
crying, ^^ Lazarus, come forth! " so he comes 
to speak to his tempted ones, to call them 
back to life, faith, hope, joy, and activity, to 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 47 

a blessed resurrection from despondency to 
spiritual life! Therefore let him whom Satan 
has bound with the grave-clothes of doubt 
listen for that divine voice until its thrilling 
whispers are heard, saying, *' Come forth! 
Loose him, and let him go! " Even now, O 
drooping soul, it speaks, wouldst thou but 
listen. Even now, if thou wilt, thy soul, re- 
lieved of all its bonds, may enter into the free- 
dom and joy of a resurrection into a new life 
of peace ! 

A CHILD-LIKE -^'^ ^^ ^^^ habit of the times 
HEART. |.Q criticise every thing that 

pertains to Scripture and to the religious life. 
Some people talk as if criticism were synony- 
mous with religion. They affect, in truth, to 
prefer the attitude of the critic to the char- 
acter of the Christian. To such a remark 
of Professor Shairp is pertinent. He weD 
says that *'it is trust, not criticism, that the 
soul lives by. If one is ever to get beyond 
the mere outer precinct and pass within 
the holy place, one must put off his critical 



48 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

apparatus and enter as a simple, contrite- 
hearted man. Not as men of science, not as 
philosophers, but as little children, shall we 
enter the kingdom of heaven. . . . The 
child's heart within the man is characteristic of 
the best men. . . . Thisistheir very love, their 
essential self. And this child's heart it is that 
is the organ of faith, trust, heavenly commun- 
ion." Blessed, therefore, is that critic who 
subordinates his intellectual faculty to a 
child-like heart! 

REVERENT ^^^ English writer says that 
LOVE. irreverence is a characteristic 

of the people of this country, and that it 
arises from the fact that they have no vener- 
able ancestry, no ancient traditions to revere. 
There may be some truth in this charge, since 
age is less revered here than in some old 
countries, and in too many instances religious 
truth, also, is handled with irreverent free- 
dom. Reverence has been called ** the angel 
of the world." Paul exhorts the Church to 
serve God "with reverence and godly fear.' ' 



Faith, Hope, Lo\t:, Duty, 49 

Seeing that reverence is the child of respect, 
no man who properly respects the Divine 
Being can speak of sacred things with irrever- 
ence. He will never mention tliem jestingly; 
neither will he talk lightly of matters pertain- 
ing to his Christian life. His spirit will 
rather be that of John Wesley, who said: 

" With duteous reverence at thy feet, 
Ivike humble Mary, lo ! I sil." 

But the man who can think of the awful 
mysteries of our holy religion, of the exalted 
character of Christ, and of the mercies of 
God to his own soul without having a spirit 
of " reverent love '* awakened in his breast 
has too much reason for suspecting the gen- 
uineness of his profession of discipleship. 

Shakespeare savs that '*a 

THE INFIRMI- 
TIES OF friend should bear a friend's 

FRIENDS. ' r ' - „ 1 1 

mnrmities; and Solomon in 
his wisdom says, '' Thine own friend and thy 
father's friend forsake not/' One reason for 
these counsels is the rarity of true friendship. 
It so seldom happens that men's hearts are 



50 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

knit to each other with such a strong bond 
as that which blended the souls of David and 
Jonathan that when one does find such a 
kindred spirit one should not lightly cast 
him off, but should bear with his infirmities. 
This duty was well expressed one day by 
Mary Lamb, when her usually gentle brother, 
enraged with Hazlitt because he had mingled 
some savage ridicule with his admiring re- 
marks upon Wordsworth and Coleridge, said: 
*' It is like saluting a man by saying, * Sir, 
you are the greatest man I ever saw,' and 
then pulling his nose!" To this angry re- 
mark Mary gently replied: "We cannot af- 
ford to cast oft our friends because they are 
not all we could wish." Sensible Mary 
Lamb! Our friends have infirmities, and so 
have we, and if we cast off our old friends 
for that reason we shall soon be friendless. 
When they do vex us by a display of spleen 
or folly it is better not to use their infirmities 
as thorns with which to wound our own af- 
fections, but to think of the real worth which 
is only obscured, not destroyed, by their 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 51 

folly. Paul's precept, '' Let all anger be put 

away from you," has a special value for 

friends, as also has the distich of a moralist 

who says, 

" He is a friend 
Who of the very stones against him cast 
BuilJs friendship's altar higher and more fast." 

A SINGULAR "^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ churclies at 
EPITAPH. Florence there is a monu- 
ment to a soldier named Trivulzio, on which 
is inscribed an epitaph written by himself, to 
wit: "Johannes Trivultius, who never rested, 
rests — hush! " A singular inscription, truly! 
Nevertheless, that restless soldier was but a 
type of most men to whom life is an unrest- 
ing sea, wearisome to the body, and, apart 
from Christ, affording no repose to mind or 
heart. But was Trivulzio really at rest ? His 
ashes were quiet. Had his soul found that 
"rest which remaineth for the people of 
God?" AVho knows? One may hope that 
it had. But more important to thee, O restless 
reader, is the question, ^^Will my soul enter 
that blissful rest when my ashes shall sleep 



52 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

in the earth ? " If you are a man in Christ, 

it will, since it is only of such that a voice 

from heaven says, ^^ Write, Blessed are the 

dead which die in the Lord from henceforth; 

yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from 

their labors." Hence, if you are Christ's, to 

you 

"This life of mortal breath 
Is but a suburb of the life Elysian 
Whose portal we call Death." 

"THAT ^viLL Sala, a Florentine artist, 
^^•" when sick unto death, was 

twice carried to the Church of St. Nazaro to 
look at some beautiful frescoes with which 
his genius had adorned its walls. '^ That 
will do ! " he exclaimed as they bore him ten- 
derly away to his couch of death. " That will 
do ! " When Dr. Bushnell recorded this in- 
cident he said: " O, that I, that every man, 
when life is waning, may be able to look back 
on the works of life and say, ^ That will do ! ' " 
This is a fitting desire for all to cherish, but to 
make it more than vapid sentiment one needs 
to refuse to put any deeds into one's life which 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 53 

will not bear retrospection when the light of 
eternity shines on the moment of his mortal 
agony. 

^^^.^ ^^ That unmanly young; man 

BREAD OF J J b 

IDLENESS. who abuses the too indulgent 
good nature of his father by refusing to apply 
himself to business for self-support, prefer- 
ring the bread of idleness to the sweeter 
bread of industry, would do well to give an 
honest response to the query of the poet 
who asks, 

'* How can he expect that others should 
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call 
Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all ? " 

UPS AND ^^^ ^^ pious in church on 

DOWNS. Sundays and worldly on week- 
days, or to be full of sweetness in prayer- 
meeting and of acidity at home, is to discredit 
one's profession of faith. Well does Leighton 
say of such contradictory conduct that " it 
is a most unseemly and unpleasant thing to 
see a man's Hfe full of ups and downs, one 
step like a Christian and another like a world- 



54 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

ling; it cannot but both pain himself and 
mar the edification of others." The fig-tree 
which bore nothing but leaves is the type of 
such a man; and is not the fate of that tree 
also emblematical of his fate ? 

THE BLESSED " The tcrrors of the Lord" 
^^^^- have driven mihions of men 

from the practice of vice; but the more than 
magnetic power of the love of Christ is neces- 
sary to attract and hold men to the practice 
of holiness. The spiritual man, though fear 
was at the beginning of his religious life, does 
not say, ''I serve the Lord that I may escape 
from future misery," but he does say with the 
devout Mrs. Prentiss, '^It is because I believe, 
fully believe, that I shall be saved through 
Christ that I want to be like him here upon 
earth. It is because I do not fear final 
misery that I shrink from sin and defilement 
here." The simple fact is that to be saved 
here is to be put into present possession of 
that personal love for God in Christ which is 
the essence of the life of souls in heaven. 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 55 

He that knows and loves God ''hath eternal 
life." His joy in the hereafter will proceed 
from the amplification of that knowledge and 
the intensification of that love under condi- 
tions in perfect harmony with all the require- 
ments of his being. Blessed life ! 

WORKING Revivals are God's answers 

CHURCHES. |-Q ^]^^ prayers of working 
churches. To "convince the world of sin" 
is the mission of the Holy Spirit, but in exe- 
cuting this mission he speaks in the word 
faithfully preached by his embassadors and 
illustrated in the life of the Church. Given, 
therefore, a truly consistent Church, a wise and 
faithful ministry, with the believing prayers of 
a body of Christians, and the conviction of sin- 
ners must follow. To imagine unwillingness 
in the Spirit to convince men of sin is guilty 
presumption. He is always willing, yea, wait- 
ing, even desirous, to prick sinners to the 
heart. But he must have the dutiful Church 
and the applied word through which to 
work. 



56 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

INCONGRUOUS ^ SLAVE does his master's 
AFFECTIONS, bidding because he dreads the 
lash. Fear is the spur of his obedience. A 
son obeys his father with spontaneous affec- 
tion. His obedience springs from his heart 
as flowers do from plants. Hence it is that 
Christian believers, being sons of God, do not 
abstain from sinful, worldly practices reluc- 
tantly and through slavish fear, but from a 
filial determination to do nothing that tends 
to lessen the intimacy of their fellowship with 
the Father. Instead of asking how much of 
the world they may take into their lives with- 
out offense to God they shrink from even its 
doubtful practices as from infected garments, 
"hating," as Jude says, "even the garm.ent 
spotted by the flesh." Being filled with the 
love of the Father, they do not love the world, 
for " if any man love the world, the love of the 
Father is not in him." These opposite loves 
cannot abide together, the one being neces- 
sarily expulsive of the other. Judge thyself, 
therefore, O man, by these principles ! By 
which love is thy heart and thy life governed ? 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 57 

NOT AT HOME ^' GoD often calls on us," 

TO GOD. g^^.g ^i^g .Y|3]3^ ROUX, " but 

generally we are not at home." The godless 
man may smile at this quaint putting of a se- 
rious fact; but it is no smiling matter for 
mortal man to treat the calls of the Almighty 
One with contemptuous neglect. There is an 
awful meaning in God's declaration concern- 
ing this heinous sin. ^^ Because I have 
called," he says, " and ye refused ... I also 
will laugh at your calamity. I will mock 
when your fear cometh ! " Think, therefore, 
O trifler with the calls of God, that thy re- 
fusals to listen to him are seeds destined to 
grow into words of condemnation upon thee 
from his lips. What wilt thou do when 
Heaven laughs at thy calamity ? 

THE WAITING ^'^ ^^^^ Christian need 

COMFORTER. p^^|^ j^-^ ^^^^ -^ ^j^^ ^^jj^^ ^^ 

the shadow of death, seeing that his Lord 
bids him *' lie down in green pastures " and 
waits to ''lead him beside the still waters '' of 
spiritual consolation. The Comforter is at 



58 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

his door waiting with loving desire to enter 
into his troubled heart. The Spirit's mission 
is to comfort, but he cannot enter into a 
prayerless, unbelieving mind, because unbe- 
lief is blind and cannot realize his presence. 
What thou needest to do, therefore, O gloomy, 
desponding disciple, is to ask, to knock, to 
trust. The Comforter stands waiting, desir- 
ing with infinite longing to fill thee with light, 
love, and peace. Lift up thy fainting heart 
and thy heavy eyelids and cry, 

" In the hour of my distress, 
When temptations me oppress. 
And when I my sins confess, 
Sweet Sjiirit, comfort me ! " 

"The summit of creature 

SUMMIT OF 

CR EATURE perfection," says a good old 

PERFECTION. ,. . ,,.. . , . . 

divme, hes m brmging our 
own emptiness to the fullness that is in Christ 
Jesus.'* If to this beautiful conception we 
add Paul's inspired declaration that our emp- 
tiness " may be filled unto all the fullness of 
God," the thought becomes grand and thrill- 
ing. That such absolute emptiness of all 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 59 

goodness as ours may be filled unto the com- 
plete fullness of the infinite God would be in- 
credible had not God himself revealed it as a 
possibility. Nay, more than this, hehas fore-or- 
dained that everyone who believeth shall '^be 
conformed to the image of his Son," in whom 
dwelt '^ the fullness of the Godhead." O won- 
drous privilege I What unmatched honor is 
this, that the man who was once the slave of his 
own vices is destined '' to be perfect as man, 
as God is perfect as God," and that '' his per- 
fection shall consist in his being full of Ciod, 
God dwelling in him so as absolutely to con- 
trol all his cognitions, feelings, and outward 
actions." Go, then, O man, with thy soul as 
an empty vessel, and cry to the ever-listening 
One, saying, '^ Fill me, O my God, with all 
the fullness that is in Christ ! " If thy faith 
be equal to his willingness he will not send 
thee away empty. 

DECLINING 'r^^ fi^s^ ^^^ most usual 
SPIRITUALITY, symptom of declining spirit- 
uality is a languid shrinking from that vigor 



6o Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

in secret devotion and from that restless 
activity in religious duty which characterize 
one in sound spiritual health. The soul, 
weary of her struggles against her own aggress- 
ive selfishness and her external temptations, 
repines because she must not live in '* a land 
of drowsy head," but must act the part of an 
athlete on a race-course, of a combatant in 
the field of mortal strife. This languid frame 
of mind, if not resolutely throwm off, must 
end in apostasy. Hence one who feels it 
stealing over him needs to reflect that the 
law of toil is not peculiar to the spiritual, but 
is equally operative in the spheres of the 
physical and intellectual. As Ruskin tersely 
observes, ^' If you want knowledge, you must 
toil for it; if food, you must toil for it; and 
if pleasure, you must toil for it. Toil is the 
law. Pleasure comes through toil, and not 
by self-indulgence and indolence. When 
one gets to love work his life is a happy 
one." And because toil is the universal 
law the Holy Ghost says to every believer, 
'^ Work out your salvation with fear and 



Fatth, Hope, Love, Duty. 6i 

trembling;" and a Christian poet most 
truthfully sings: 

" This is a scene of combat, not of rest ; 

Man's is laborious happiness at best ; 
On this side death his dangers never cease, 

His joys are joys of conquest, not of peace." 

y^jf^ A MAX who defends an un- 

OBLATioNS. righteous deed by pleading 
his purpose to do good with its profits is 
either a consummate hypocrite or a blind 
dupe of the Evil One. Suppose, for example, 
a financier in building a railroad deliberately 
plans to rob its stockholders by means of a 
dishonest construction company. Self-ac- 
cused at the bar of his conscience, he excuses 
his guilt by saying to himself, '^Yes, my 
practice in this affair is rather sharp, but I 
will divide my profits with the Lord by 
building a church or endowing a professor- 
ship in some college. That will make it all 
right." Is not this the presumptuous language 
of blind self-deception or of hardened hypoc- 
risy ? Is it not the false plea of men of whom 
Paul says, '' Whose damnation is just ?^ " 



62 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

Alas! that intelligent men should be so slow 
to learn that 

*' God does not need our crimes to help his cause, 

Nor does his equitable law permit 
A sinful act, from the preposterous plea 
That good may follow it." 

It is of such acts that God saith, '^ To what pur- 
pose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto 
me ? Bring no more [such] vain oblations ! " 

That the excessive expres- 
UNRE- . ^ .... 

STRAINED sion of cmotion IS exhaustive 

Jr^i?Ji?T^ o( the emotion itself is matter 
both of observation and ex- 
perience. The most violent mourners over 
the dead, for example, are among the earliest 
to find solace for their grief. It has been 
well said by a celebrated Frenchman that 
^' never without an evident and impracticable 
miracle can the words of the poet respecting 
a magic cup be spoken of the soul: 

" * And still the more the vase poured forth, 
The more it seemed to hold ] ' " 

As the vase is emptied by the act of pouring, 
so is the heart. Hence, even in the religious 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 6^ 

life, one needs to be reserved in giving 
utterance to feeling and to take abundant 
time to fill up the soul with emotion by 
means of secret prayer and quiet contem- 
plation. 

CHRISTIAN ^s ^^^ iceberg from the 
MANNERS. frozen North slowly floating 
toward the sunny South lowers the tempera- 
ture of the warm Gulf Stream, so do men who 
*^are cold in blood" chill the warmth of 
friendly feeling in their most genial friends. 
Th-ir cold manners cause others to think that 
" Their love can scarce deserve the name." 

This impression may be false, at least in part. 
Their hearts may be warmer than their man- 
ners. Nevertheless, since love is a genial, 
gentle, self-demonstrating affection, and can 
only beget a kindred love in others by words 
that breathe with sympathy, it is a Christian's 
duty to cultivate, not his inward affection 
only, but also his outward manners, so that 
they may be manifestations of that love, joy, 
peace, gentleness, goodness, and meekness 



6-4 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

which are the rich and beautiful '' fruit of 
the Spirit." To merely affect warmth in 
one's manners without affection in the heart 
is hypocrisy, but to add outward cordiality 
to real love is to beautifully illustrate Chris- 
tian duty. 

HEAVENLY- ^^^ ^^^ rivcr always '' makes 
MiNDEDNESs. nieutiou of its bed," so he 
whose mind dwells wholly on earthly things 
becomes more and more earthly in his affec- 
tions, while he who sets his thoughts on things 
above becomes more and more heavenly- 
minded. As one's spiritual life matures one's 
meditations upon heaven become increasingly 
frequent, profound, and refreshing. Hence 
every growing disciple can say, with good Rich- 
ard Baxter, " I had rather hear or meditate on 
God and heaven than on any other subject; for 
I perceive that it is the object that altereth and 
elevateth the mind which will be such as that 
is which it most frequently feedeth on." And 
there is not only a transforming force in 
meditation, but when directed to the glories 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 65 

of the life to come it becomes a spur to 
duty, a source of strength to resist temp- 
tation, and a refreshing spring of joy and 
gladness. To cite Baxter again: '' A man is no 
more a Christian indeed than he is heavenly- 
minded." 

IN THE SHEP- ^"'^^^ good shepherd expects 
HERD'S BOSOM. ^^^^^^^ ]^[^ i^j-^^j^s ^j. feeble 

sheep to travel unaided with the healthy and 
vigorous portion of his flock. Rather he 
carries the lambs in his arms and leads the 
feeble ones with slo\y and gentle steps. In 
this he is a type of our Good Shepherd, who 
exacts no service which is beyond the strength 
of his sheep. Nevertheless, it often happens 
that when disciples who have been active in 
his service are disabled by age or by sickness 
from doing Christian work they charge their 
enforced inactivity to lack of love, and conse- 
quently fall into the great deep of chronic 
despondency. To a sick lady thus tempted 
her well-instructed sister wrote: "You are 
weak, and therefore invited not to march with 



66 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

the flock, but to rest in your Saviour's arms. 

If the tempter goads you even there do not 

turn round to look on him, but hide your 

head deeper in your Saviour's bosom." This 

is scriptural counsel. In his weakest, most 

helpless state the believer may — nay, should — 

cry, 

" My God ! my Father ! on thee will I rest — 
Rest with unbounded confidence on thee ; 
No slavish fears shall now enthrall my breast, 
I stand erect in holiest liberty." 

AFFLICTION A ^o an ungodly man afflic- 
BLESSiNG. ^JQj-^ ^5 ^y^ irritating misfortune 
for which he sees no compensation. But a 
good man can accept it saying : 

"Affliction, when I know it, is but this: 
A deep alloy, whereby man tougher is 

To bear the hammer, and the deeper still, 
We still arise more image of his will." 

REALLY ^^ ^^ ^^ conscientious as 

FIGHTING SIN. to be troublcd about " motes " 
in other men's eyes, and yet so morally insen- 
sitive as not to feel the " beam " in one's own 
eye, is to demonstrate one's lack both of 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 67 

self-knowledge and of charity. The beam 
in a man's own eye is of far more real con- 
sequence to him than any mote in another's 
eye can ever be. He who really fights sin 
always strikes his own faults first. 

THE POISON OF Has somc ouc who once did 
REVENGE. yQ^ ^ great injury fallen into 
disgrace and suffering ? Are you tempted to 
suck sweetness from that fact, as bees sip 
nectar from flowers ? If so, beware ! for in- 
stead of sweetness you will find only the 
poison of revenge. An old divine well says 
of the pleasure of revengeful feeling that 
" the root of it is devilish." 

The fruit of savino; faith is 

FAITH FLOW- ^ 

ING INTO not found exclusivelv in feel- 

WORK. . ^ . ^ ,. 

ing, but m feeling that flows 
into work. Piety that exhausts itself in singing 
and prayer will speedily dry up the springs 
of emotion and empty the heart of comfort 
and joy; but piety that seeks to give effect to 
its own prayers by actively striving to win 



6S Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

others to Christian discipleship will keep the 
heart fresh, joyous, and happy. It is said of 
Rev. Andrew Fuller that, though eminently 
devout, he failed either to be truly happy 
himself or to make his church happy until 
h3 engaged himself and his people in mission 
work. Then he wrote, '' My engagement in 
the mission had a wonderful influence in re- 
viving true religion in my soul, and from that 
time, notwithstanding all my family afflictions, 
I have been one of the happiest of men." 
And as with him so it was with his 
church, and so it is with all believers. He 
who works for Christ, as a soul- winner, tastes 
the true sweetness of the religious life. He 
that selfishly refrains from it shrivels his 
heart and is a stranger to the joy of the Lord. 
Art thou, O reader, one of the lean, drooping, 
uncomforted idlers in the vineyard ? If so 
thou must either change thy course or find 
thy spiritual life drying up like a brook in a 
summer's drought. If thou wouldst have it 
otherwise go work to save a soul ! Speak 
to some sinner about his soul. Circulate 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 69 

tracts, teach the children, exhort in the pray- 
er-meeting, 

" Do something — do it with all thy might ; 
An angel's wing would droop if long at rest, 
And God himself inactive were no longer blest." 

A SPOILED *' Life is short, and I mean 
LIFE. ^Q gg|. ^^ much out of it as I 

can." Thus spoke a young man whose mind 
was bent on a career of godlessness and 
gayety. Did he find life worth living ? If he 
did he was an exception to universal experi- 
ence, which was forcibly expressed by Lord 
Peterborough, who died in 1735. ^^^ ^^^g 
before his death he wrote the following sad 
confession to his friend. Lady Suffolk: ^^ I 
have some time since made a bargain with 
fate to submit with patience to all her 
freaks; some accidents have given me a 
great contempt, almost a distaste, for life. 
Shakespeare shall tell you my opinion 
of it: 

" ' Life is as weary as a twice-told tale 
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man. 



70 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

Life is a walking shadow — a poor player 
That frets and struts his hour upon the stage 
And then is seen no more.' 

Do not wonder, then, if the world is become 
so indifferent to me that I can even amuse 
myself with the thought of going out of it." 
This is a sad picture of a life which had 
sipped wine from every beaker of passional 
delight. Contrasted with it how sublime 
does Paul appear when, standing near the 
close of a life filled with Christ-like labor, 
he joyously exclaimed: "I have fought a 
good fight, I have finished my course, I have 
kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for 
me a crown of righteousness ! " Happy Paul ! 
Happy, too, is that modern man who, shun- 
ning the rock on which such men as Lord 
Peterborough wreck their barks, enters into 
covenant with Christ and nears the grave 
with a crown of righteousness in full view ! 

In times of awakeninsf some 

EARNEST . ' . 

SEEKING FOR peuitcuts remain a long time 

in the ranks of seekers. They 

are slow, dull learners in the school of faith. 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 71 

In some cases this is caused by lack of light; 
the simplicity of faith is something they do 
not clearly comprehend. Such penitents 
need special personal instruction. But with 
most slow-moving seekers the real difficulty 
is the lack, not of light, but of earnestness. 
They are not seeking Christ with all their 
hearts. They do not possess that agony of 
desire which moves the soul to cast itself in 
self-despair upon Christ. Their type may be 
seen in a farmer, who, when touched by the 
Spirit of God, mourned over his sins, but 
found no comfort. One day, while sitting 
before the fire with a sad countenance, and 
musing on his condition, he suddenly looked 
toward his believing wife and asked^ ^^ What 
must I do to become a Christian ? " The 
good woman at once recalled the fact that 
not long before her husband, having lost a 
bank-note in his barn, had said, '^ I will 
search for it till I find it.'* Alluding to this 
remark, she now replied, '' You must seek for 
pardon as you sought for the bank-note." 
He saw the point, threw his whole soul into 



72 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

his seeking, and speedily found the waiting 
Christ. It is always thus. Really earnest 
seekers, who have been taught the way of 
faith, soon find Him who is already seeking 
them as a shepherd seeks a stray sheep. 
^' Seek and ye shall find." 

THE BEST -"-^ ^^^y heart seething with 

.REVENGE. angry emotions because 'thy 

neighbor hath done thee wrong ? Art thou, 

like Saul, breathing threatenings against him ? 

If so, forbear, O man ! Remember that 

*' The best revenge is love ; disarm 

Anger with smiles ; heal wounds with balm ; 

Give water to thy thirsty foe ; 
The sandal-tree, as if to prove 

How sweet to conquer hate by love, 
Perfumes the ax that lays it low." 

THINGS THAT " What is above survives; " 
SURVIVE. ^^,j^^|- jg below perishes. 

Hence, says Paul: "The things which are 
seen are temporal; but the things which 
are not seen are eternal." This important 
thought is quaintly but fitly expressed by 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 73 

old Geoffrey Whitney, in the following 

stanza: 

*'This world must change, that world shall still en- 
dure ; 

Here pleasures fade, there they shall endless be ; 
Here man doth sin, and there he shall be pure ; 

Here death he tastes, and there shall never die ; 
Here hath he grief, and there shall joys possess 

As none hath seen nor any heart can guess." 

These thoughts pondered and prayed over 
by that half-lukewarm disciple who is 
tempted to relax his pursuit of heaven that 
he may taste the guilty pleasures of earth can 
scarcely fail to quicken his decaying spirit- 
uality. Neglect not to try their effect, O 
halting disciple ! 

LIFE'S CLOUDY C)UR lives are at some pe- 
DAYS. riods like those occasional 

seasons in the year which are marked by a 
seemingly endless succession of stormy and 
cloudy days. Our troubles are multiplied 
both in form and by repetition. Personal 
sickness is followed by business involve- 
ments, by family afflictions, by bereavements, 
6 



74 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

or by alienation of friends. We are be- 
wildered, perplexed, cast down, and, as our 
Whittier sings, 

*' In the dark we cry like children, and no answer 

from on high 
Breaks the crystal spheres of silence ; and no white 

wings downward fly ; 
But the help we pray for comes to faith and not to 

sight, 
And our prayers themselves drive backward all the 

spirits of the night." 

The poet sings the truth. Help comes to us 
through the prayer of faith. To that prayer 
Heaven responds by revealing God's hand 
outstretched through the clouds which blind 
our natural vision. We see him coming to be 
our helper, and our fear is replaced by hope. 
Light breaks in upon us, and we see that, as the 
photographer keeps his camera in a darkened 
box and puts his negative through a chemical 
process in a dark room in order to bring our 
portrait into distinctness, so our heavenly 
Father has placed us in the darkness of many 
afflictions, that he may thereby complete the 
process of transforming us into his glorious 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 75 

likeness. Then we are content to suffer to 
the full extent of what he sees to be neces- 
sary to our spiritual purification and adorn- 
ment. With Paul we sing: '' Our light afflic- 
tion, which is but for a moment, worketh 
for us a far more exceeding and eternal 
weight of glory.*' And seeing this, 'Sve 
faint not." 

GOD'S Minutes are God's messen- 

MESSENGERS. gers, dropping from their 
wings the dews of heaven on thirsty souls. 
One writer calls minutes God's bees bringing 
nectar from the flowers of paradise which they 
leave with them that wait for his mercies 
and ihen fly away only to be succeeded by 
others. But it is only to them who wait for 
the nectar and the dew that the minutes give 
their treasures. It is only they who " hunger 
and thirst after righteousness " that are filled. 

A SOCIAL ^^ every man who enters a 

BORE. social circle would give it his 

brightest smiles, his best thoughts, and his 



76 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

most cheerful words, his presence would be 
a benediction to his friends. And has not 
society a right to demand this much of him ? 
No doubt it has. Yet there are many who, 
forgetting this obligation, form the bad habit 
of carrying sad faces, long-drawn sighs, and. 
dreary stories of their ailments, trials, and 
difficulties into every parlor, class-room, and 
church vestry they visit. Their tongues are 
trained to speak the cant of sorrow. They 
love to so exaggerate their woes as to gain 
the sympathy of their friends. Of one such 
person Tennyson says : 

"He loves to make parade of pain, 
That with his piping he may gain 
The praise that comes to constancy." 

That is, he uses the ills of his condition in 
life as capital earning unmerited praise of 
his endurance. Is it too much to say that 
such a man demoralizes himself by his in- 
sincerity, constitutes himself a social bore, 
and fails to cultivate that habitual cheerful- 
ness w^hich is the characteristic of every 
healthy Christian heart ? 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 77 

The davs for summer rec- 

ANNIVERSA- 

RiES OF THE reatioii have come — the holi- 

HEART 

days during which one quits 

the ordinary haunts of life and mingles with 

the crowds who frequent the watering-place, 

the camp-ground, and other places of popular 

resort. It is well for those who can to enjoy 

innocent pleasure at spots consecrated to rest 

and recuperation. But it is wise, while 

dwelling with the crowd, to keep in mind the 

fact that 

" The holiest of all holidays are those 
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart, 
The secret anniversaries of the heart." 

Such anniversaries may be kept, such holi- 
days enjoyed, in the most crowded resorts, 
provided one sets apart portions of his 
time for self-communion, reflection, and 
contemplation, ^' in silence and apart." 
One can only escape loss of spirituality, 
even at a camp-meeting, by stepping aside 
occasionally from the multitude and com- 
muning in secret with God and his own 
heart. 



78 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

THE ENJOY- ^^ ^^^ been well said that 
MENT OF GOD. ^ ^he enjoyment of heaven 
will not be the enjoyment of self, but the en- 
joyment of God, losing ourselves in him, in 
light ineffable, that he may be all in all." 
Francis Quarles has this thought expressed 
in his own quaint style, as follows: 

" 111 having all things, and not Thee, what have I ? 

Not having thee, what have my labors got ? 
Let me enjoy but thee, what farther crave I? 

And having thee alone, what have I not? 
I wish nor sea, nor land, nor would I be 

Possessed of heaven, heaven unpossessed of thee." 

A MISTAKEN Behold an ungodly man 
^^^- standing beside the body of 

a departed saint ! The former calls the latter 
dead, and regards himself as the living man. 
O mistaken man ! It is he who is dead, and 
not the saint. The saint only sleepeth in the 
flesh; but, being joined to God in spirit, is 
living in and with him in the everlasting life 
which is the heritage of faith. But the un- 
godly man, being without faith, is only physi- 
cally alive. Being without God, he is spiritually 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 79 

dead. He has but to pass the gate of mortal- 
ity in his present godless condition to find 
himself dead beyond recovery, doomed by 
his own choice to that endless separation 
from God which is the essence, the sting, the 
torment of everlasting death. 

There is a broad, refresh- 

GUARDED ' 

FROM ing view of the Saviour's 

STUMBLING. , , • ^ „ 

power to keep his followers 
from falling into sin in Jude's remarkable 
ascription at the close of his brief epistle: 
" Now unto him that is able to keep you from 
falling, and to present you faultless before the 
presence of his glory with exceeding joy." 
In the Revised Version these words are still 
more explicitly rendered: ^^ Unto him that is 
able to guard you from stumblings and to set 
you before the presence of his glory without 
ble7?iish in exceeding joy." To a believer 
whose profound self-knowledge is blended 
with a highly quickened conscience Jude*s 
conception of his final presentation so puri- 
fied that when standing in the blaze of his 



So Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

Master's glory no blemish will be visible in 
his soul is a thrilling thought. It taxes his 
faith to the utmost capacity to believe that' 
he, so prone to sin, shall attain to such abso- 
lute spotlessness. Nevertheless, he does not 
doubt the ability of his Lord to do this great 
thing ; neither does he dare to doubt his will- 
ingness to do it, since he knows that this was 
the very end for which his Lord died. Hence 
the ascription invigorates his faith, revives 
his hope, intensifies his love, renews his vigor 
to strive with evil, and enables him to realize 
in actual experience that his Master is both 
able and willing not merely to keep him from 
falling, but *' to guard him," as a parent does a 
child, even "from stumbling." Thus cheered 
he looks constantly upward, descrying 

*' Nearer, eacli day, the briglitening goal !" 

COMFORTLESS ^^ DISCONTENTED man eats 
DESPAIR. ]^jg Q^j^ heart through what 

Spenser calls ^' comfortless despairs." Instead 
of being grateful for the things he possesses 
he frets for those which are beyond his reach. 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 81 

His heart, which ought to be an altar perpet- 
ually smoking wdth the sacrifices of gratitude, 
is " a grave in which all God*s mercies are 
buried/' Supreme selfishness, producing a 
false estimate of his real deservings, is the 
force which makes his soul resemble the 
greedy quicksand that swallows whatever 
touches it. Hence a discontented mind can 
find no relief except through that surrender 
of self to Christ which with faith is the fore- 
runner of that "godliness with contentment'* 
which is " great gain." 

AVHEN FEAR Fear pcrishes when faith 
PERISHES. 3^^(j Iq^q j^]^ [^ ^Y\e heart of 

a man. True, there are such evils as fierce 
diseases, poverty, the malice of malignant men, 
the weakness of the soul itself, yet the man 
of faith and love scorns to fear them. Why 
not fear them ? Simply because the God he 
trusts whispers in his heart, ** Fear not, thou 
worm Jacob. ... I will help thee, saith the 
Lord, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of 
Israel." That lofty promise inspires him with 



82 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

such spiritual grandeur that he feels it ^^ be- 
neath his dignity to cringe to any thing but 
God." Nothing can .really hurt the man 
whom God protects 

SHUNNING ^^ ^^^ multitudes who neg- 
THE LIGHT. ^^^^ j|^g pubUc worship of 

God there are many who do so for the same 
reason that led Adam and Eve to hide from 
the presence of God — they dare not face the 
light which flashes from God's word. Since 
they will not give themselves to God they 
avoid services which disturb their consciences 
by revealing them to themselves. Resolved 
to do evil deeds, they will not go into the 
light. By thus keeping out of the light they 
reach a persuasion that they are not so very 
wicked after all; that they are, indeed, too 
good to be finally reckoned among castaways. 
This is sad self-deception. Their voluntary 
blindness does not prevent them from being 
counted with men of whom the poet writes: 

" How many a one must shun tlie light. 
Or sliow a leper to the sight I " 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. S;^ 

A GOOD "He is a good hater " can 

HATER. never be truthfully said of a 
genuine disciple of Christ, since *^ he that lov- 
eth not his brother abideth in death." Good 
men may conceive mutual prejudices because 
of opposite tastes, manners, ideas, or interests; 
but they cannot /late each other without ceas- 
ing to be truly good. If their prejudices 
lead them to injure each other's reputation 
by inconsiderate speeches they cannot be un- 
forgiving without forfeiting the divine for- 
giveness. Hence an old divine very perti- 
nently remarks: '^An unforgiving temper is 
an invincible bar against our obtaining divine 
mercy. We can neither receive pardon, nor 
have it continued, nor enjoy the comfortable 
sense of it without pardoning others. It is 
a sin of such malignity that it envenoms poi- 
son itself; it deepens the guilt of all other 
sins." Still more authoritative and alarm- 
ing is the expressive saying of Jesus: "If 
ye forgive not men their trespasses, nei- 
ther will your heavenly Father forgive your 
trespasses." 



84 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

ASHES IN THE PLEASURE, whcn SOUght aS 

MOUTH. ^^ g^^^^ jg ^g ashes in the 

mouth, and curses its seeker; but when it is 
the fruit of duty faithfully performed it is 
sweet to the taste and a healthy stimulant to 
the growth of the soul. 

A GRAVE Some Christians shrink from 

MISTAKE. ^\^Q highest plane of the relig- 
ious life as involving greater hardship and 
more severe spiritual conflicts than living on 
a lower plane. Such persons are gravely 
mistaken. As a saintly man once observed, 
** It is easier for a Christian to walk habitu- 
ally near to God than to be irregular in our 
walk with him." Easier, indeed, because the 
faithful soul not only escapes the shame, guilt, 
and weakness which accompany unfaithful- 
ness, but it draws such ineffable sweetness, 
such abounding grace, such supernal strength 
from Christ's boundless love that the sternest 
duties are transformed into delights. Then 
there is such oneness of will between Christ 
and the disciple that the latter sees no hard- 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 85 

ship in any duty. Love makes all things 
easy. Most of the difficulties of the spiritual 
life grow out of one's resistance to self-cruci- 
fixion; but when one is once crucified with 
Christ the Christian life is a perennial fore- 
taste of the life of heaven. 

One's moral distance from 

ONE'S DIS- 
TANCE FROM God is not measured by miles, 

but by the degree of one's 
unlikeness to our heavenly Father. Hence 
the truth of Augustine's remark: " By becom- 
ing unlike God thou hast gone far away; by 
becoming like him thou drawest near.'* 
Therefore, O man, whosoever thou art, let 
the burden of thy prayer be, *^ Nearer, my 
God, to thee, nearer to thee ! " 

When wearied in body and 

SENSE OF ^ 

SENSELESS- jaded in mind a good man 

NESS. 

finds it difficult to offer his 
evening devotions v/ith fervor and self-recol- 
lectedness, his mind sinks into dreaminess 
and wanders from thought of the Being he 



S6 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

addresses and from things he is praying for. 
This state of mind grieves him, and he often 
writes bitter things against himself on account 
of it. To comfort such a man good John 
Bunyan says: " If thou findest thyself sense- 
less in some sad measure, yet thou canst not 
complain of that senselessness, but by being 
sensible of it. There is a sense of senselessness. 
According to thy sense, then, that thou hast 
need of any thing, so pray; and if thou art 
sensible of thy senselessness pray the Lord 
to make thee sensible of whatever thou find- 
est thy heart senseless of." This quaintly 
expressed advice is worthy of acceptance, 
since it suggests an antidote to a state of 
mind which is but too familiar to disciples of 
Jesus. It is almost equivalent to the direc- 
tion, '' Pray until thou canst pray." 

ONE MUST ^' ^ LIVE to movc," Said Sir 
WORK OR SIN. J Davies. Every man who 
understands himself will make this motto his 
own, for he must have learned from experi- 
ence that '^mind cannot exist inactively; it 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 87 

must be busy in good or evil as long as one 
is awake." Persistent indolence generates 
that unendurable, often malignant, weariness 
which wealthy people call ennui. The choice 
of a resolutely inactive mind lies between im- 
becility or immorality, and, to cite Dr. Moore, 
in Man and His Motives^ " There is noth- 
ing for educated minds to do but sin if they 
will not work." How beneficent, therefore^ 
is that law of nature which makes labor a 
grand necessity of physical existence, and 
that law of Christianity which makes every 
disciple a fellow-worker with God for the 
salvation of his fellow-creatures! Both these 
laws meet the demands of every healthy hu- 
man mind. Hence every faithful disciple 
will be diligent in business, an active worker 
for his own soul's welfare and for the souls 
of others. While he will " live to move " he 
will also be careful to move, not earthward, 
but Godward, not downward toward hell, 
but upward toward heaven. The crown of 
such activity will be unfading as the heav- 
enly glory — a ^* crown of life." 



So Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

To the infidel who sneers at 

BOOK -FAITH. . . 

Christianity as book-faith it 
has been well retorted: "One after another 
of your infidel reformers passes away and 
leaves no trace behind except a quantity of 
crumbling * book-faith/ You have always 
been just on the eve of extinguishing super- 
natural fables, dogmas, and superstitions, 
and then regenerating the world ! Alas ! the 
meanest superstition that crawls laughs at 
you, and, false as it may be, is still stronger 
than you," This is notoriously true. Infi- 
delity has nothing to give in return for old 
superstition; much less has it any thing to 
offer in exchange for our Christianity, which 
it has been striving to destroy, lo ! these 
eighteen centuries, but which is to-day 
mightier than ever. Yet, like its satanic 
master, it continues to worry what it cannot 
devour. 

NOBILITY OF Though righteousness is 

CHARACTER, possible Only to those who 

have faith in Christ, yet, says Dr. Morrison, 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 89 

"An unbeliever may be in some, or perhaps 
in many, respects a noble man — noble in 
honor, noble in patriotism, noble in philan- 
thropy. Yet his nobility of character has 
no justifying element in it. Perfect nobility 
in all relations, Godward and manward — per- 
fect and full-orbed righteousness from begin- 
ning to ending of his probationary career — 
would be requisite if men were to be justi- 
fied by works of law." Let not this thought 
offend thee, O moral man, for God himself 
hath said that without faith in his Son it is 
impossible to win his forgiveness. Go, then, 
into thy secret chamber, study thine heart, 
praying, " O Lord, show me myself ! *' and 
when thou hast learned that thine heart is 
stained with much sin pray, " God be mer- 
ciful to me a sinner ! " and thou wilt be for- 
given and renewed. 

TRUE True courage is prudent, 

COURAGE. j^Q^ j.^g|^^ j|- considers its 

ability to overcome before it attacks. Thus 
a young Christian, when a blatant skeptic is 



90 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

rehearsing the arguments cf infideUty, may- 
remain silent without being fairly open to the 
charge of cowardice if he is conscious of in- 
ability to give clear, conclusive replies to the 
specious words of the unbeliever. A Chris- 
tian poet, whose courage v/as above suspicion, 
once said: 

" Choose rather to defend than to assail, 
Self-confidence will in tlie conflict fail." 

But if the skeptic assails his faith the cour- 
ageous believer will defend it. As our poet 
sings: 

** When you are challenged, you may dangers meet ; 

True courage is a fixed, not sudden, heat ; 
Is always humble, Tives in self-distrust. 

And will itself into no danger thrust/' 

Yet when the danger is thrust upon it true 
courage valiantly defends the truth, but al- 
ways with prudence. If trained to argue, it 
will use argument. If not, it will appeal to 
fact, as did the man whose blindness had 
been healed by Christ. When the Sanhedrin 
sought to draw him into a discussion respect- 
ing the character of his mighty healer he 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 91 

grandly replied, '' Whether he be a sinner or 
no, I know not ; one thing I know, that 
whereas I was blind, now I see." In like 
manner the courageous Christian, unlearned 
in the false philosophy of infidelity, untrained 
in the use of dialectic methods, may boldly 
stand on the facts of his own experience, not 
only without parting with his courage, but in 
the loftiest consistency with its demands and 
with the best effects on the witnesses to his 
words. The testimony of a genuine believer, 
modestly expressed, will sink deeper into a 
skeptic's conscience than the most convinc- 
ing argument. The latter touches his intellect 
only. The former will touch his conscience, 
and may move his heart, if it be not given 
over to believe a lie. 

HAPPY OLD ^^^ aged man finds his type 
^^^' in the wrinkled faded leaf 

which trembles in the breeze, ready to fall to 
Mother Earth. Conscious of failing strength 
and of approaching inability to carry the bur- 
dens of life, his anxious heart cries with 



92 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

David, '' Cast me not off in the time of old 
age; forsake me not when my strength fail- 
eth." Nor does he, if a believer in Christ, 
sigh this prayer in vain. The voice of the 
Eternal One responds with more than royal 
graciousness, " Even to your old age I am 
he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you." 
This is consolation indeed ! Carried in the 
arms of the great I AM the aged man is safe, 
inexpressibly secure. He may feel as did 
the venerable Longfellow when, in his ** Mori- 
turi Salutamus," he said: 

"Old age is still old age ; 
It is the waning, not the crescent, moon ; 
The dusk of evening, not the blaze of noon ; 
It is not strength, but weakness ; not desire, 
But its surcease ; not the fierce heat of fire, 
The burning and consuming element, 
But that of ashes and of embers spent, 
In which some living sparks we still discern, 
Enough to warm, but not enough to burn." 

He may, he does, feel thus. Nevertheless, 
he does not yield to discouragement nor 
count himself a fruitless tree. He knows 
that the infinite One who carries him has 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 93 

said of such as he, " They shall still bring forth 
fruit in old age." Hence he counts his age 
an opportunity to exhibit the maturity of 
faith, the beauty of perfect love, the power 
of divine grace to keep a soul burdened with 
the weight of years happy even in its weak- 
ness, 

"And as the evening twilight fades away 
His sky is filled with stars, invisible by day." 

Happy, therefore, is Christian old age ! And 
when an old man's body falls he himself as- 
cends to heaven to be greeted as a child 
newly born into the gloriou- life. 

PARTING WITH That man is safe who can 
THE BIBLE, conscientiously say with the 
psalmist, " Thy word is a lamp to my feet." 
But when a Christian ceases to make the 
word of God his guide in the secular affairs 
of life as well as in his spiritual exercises he 
is certainly falling away from Christ. Begin- 
ning with slight departures from its ethical 
requirements, he will be likely to slight it 
more and more, and, unless he repent, finally 



94 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

cease entirely to use it as ^' a light to his 
path." It is recorded of an ancient Arabian 
prince that while heir to his father's throne 
he spent his days and nights in a mosque at 
Medina studying the Koran. When informed 
of his father's death he shut up the volume, 
saying, ''Here you and I part!" Hence- 
forth he devoted himself exclusively to affairs 
of state. Perhaps few backsliding disciples 
of Christ bid their farewell to the Bible with 
such outspoken emphasis as this, but is it not 
a melancholy fact that in the act of con- 
sciously refusing to do what a clear script- 
ural precept enjoins a Christian practically 
says to the Bible, *' Here you and I part ? " 
What then ? What, indeed, but further sur- 
render to the lordship of " the god of this 
world " and the decay of spiritual life^ It is 
well, yes, necessary, therefore, for every dis- 
ciple who hopes to hear his Lord say, " Well 
done, good and faithful servant," to keep in 
mind that his discipleship is conditioned on 
his fidelity to his Master's word, "7/" ye abide 
in me and my words abide in you, ye shall 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 95 

ask what ye will,^ and it shall be done unto 
you." 

SOUR Sour godliness is not a fruit 

GODLINESS, of the love of Christ. Sweet- 
ness, gentleness, and pity are the qualities 
with which he endows his disciples. It is 
imperfect virtue which is sour, severe, and 
implacable. Perfect virtue is meek, affable, 
and compassionate. It thinks of nothing but 
doing good, of ^' bearing one another's bur- 
den." There is no acidity in pure Christ- 
love. 

A DESPAIRING ^^ ^^ Stricken with mortal 
^^^* disease and compelled to 

leave the objects of one's affections on earth 
with no hope of happiness in the hereafter — 
this is torture. " I must leave all these things 
which cost me so much pains to acquire ! " 
was the despairing cry of Cardinal Mazarin, 
as he gazed with dying eyes on his accumu- 
lated treasures. To part with what one loves, 
without hope of meeting with things and be- 
ings yet more strongly beloved on the shore 



96 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

beyond the mystic river we call Death, is to 

feel indescribable pangs. But, as Bernard 

Barton sings, 

•' Even the last parting earth can know 
Brings not unutterable woe 

To souls that heavenward soar ; 
For humble Faith, with steadfast eye, 
Points to a brighter world on high, 
Where hearts that here at parting sigh, 

May meet — to part no more." 

A GOLDEN When Bossuet sought to 
SENTENCE. gtain the reputation of the 
exemplary Fenelon he made a perverted use 
of the latter's private letter written in strictest 
confidence. In his triumphantly exculpatory 
response to Bossuet 's assault Fenelon wrote 
the following golden sentence: ** Nothing that 
is dishonorable ever proves serviceable ! " 
This truth appeals to selfish souls who can 
only be touched by a selfish motive; but a 
truly noble mind loves honor for its own sake, 
shrinks spontaneously from the base thought 
of dishonor, and duly heeds this hint of Burns : 

*' But where ye feel your honor grip, 
Let that aye be your border I " 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 97 

That *' border " — the point where one's honor 
protests against a temptation — is the dead- 
line of character. Whoever crosses it places 
himself within range of those poisoned arrows 
from the devil's bow which give a man's in- 
tegrity its death-wound. 

THE SOFT I^ t^^ tenth book of Para- 
ANSWER. ^i^^ j^^^f Milton, after put- 
ting a scathing denunciation of Eve into 
Adam's mouth, makes the woman reply in a 
speech which for pathos stands unrivaled in 
the realm of poetry. Among other touching 
words Eve says, 

*' While yet we live, scarce one short hour, perhaps, 
Between us two let there be peace." 

Eve's plea for mutual peace subdued the an- 
ger of Adam. Pity that in all differences that 
arise between man and wife, between all, in- 
deed, who are socially connected, a similar 
plea cannot be made. There would be few 
lasting quarrels if at the outset one party 
would say to the other, 

** While yet we live, scarce one short hour, perhaps, 
Between us two let there be peace." 



98 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

It is the soft answer, not the angry retort, 
that turneth away wrath. 

SATAN'S One of Satan's " devices '* 

DEVICES. is |-Q persuade men that they 
may indulge in some secret, besetting sin 
without wholly losing the favor of God. The 
author of the " Synagogue" makes a soul so 
tempted speak to his Saviour of his cunning 
tempter in these words: 

*' Fain would he have me to believe that sin 

And thou might both 
Take up my heart for your inn. 

And neither loathe 
The other's company — awhile sit still, 

And part again." 

To this unholy suggestion the tempted soul, 
on perceiving its import, exclaims, 

" Peace, rebel thought ! dost thou not know thy King, 

My God, is here ? 
Cannot his presence, if no other thing, 

Make thee forbear?" 

What other response than this indignant self- 
censure for entertaining this evil thought, 
even for a moment, could a truly conscien- 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 99 

tious believer make ? And what an effectual 
safeguard against the motions 01 sin and the 
solicitations of the tempter is the conscious- 
ness that God, the holy God, is always pres- 
ent and is cognizant of one's inmost thought ! 
" Thou God seest me ! " Let this awful fact 
keep thee, O Christian, from making thy 
heart a nest of evil thoughts. 

In forming; plans of pleas- 

DEATH FOR- . . . 

GETS NOT ure, business, ambition, or 

THEE 

greed for the coming year, 

'• Forget not Death, O man ! for thou may'st be 
Of one thing certain — he forgets not thee." 

It is well, therefore, while planning to live, 
not to omit such preparation for the life to 
come as will enable thee to meet Death with 
a smile of welcome should he be sent to con- 
duct thee into the realm eternal during 
the year just beginning. 

SUPERFICIAL ^^ times of revival men's 
PROFESSIONS, emotions are apt to be more 
active than their understandings. The pre- 



loo Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

vailing tide of sentiment then sweeps many 
to the penitential altar and to a profession of 
faith who do not clearly comprehend the ex- 
tent of the obligations they assume. In their 
eagerness to lead such to the exercise of sav- 
ing faith some ministers omit to instruct them 
with regard to the scope of that self-conse- 
cration which faith implies. Hence the con- 
science of the convert remains partially blind 
with respect to some practices in his former 
life, and when those practices confront him 
in his subsequent career he, too often, first 
hesitates and then refuses to renounce them. 
The result is that his profession finds its 
symbol in the morning-glory, which is clothed 
in simple beauty in early morning, but 
withers when the sun's rays shine upon it. 
Hence it is the duty of faithful ministers and 
Christian workers to faithfully instruct every 
convicted sinner with regard to the ethical 
scope of Christ's requirements. That con- 
viction which will not endure such instruc- 
tion is very unlikely to lead to genuine faith 
and sound conversion. They do well who 



Faith, Hopl, Love, Duty. ioi 

remember that superficial profession is the 
rock which endangers the safety of the modern 
Church. 

THY DARLING Hast thou been called, O 
CHILD. Christian parent, to part with 

a darling child, a son or daughter, whose 
filial affection promised to be the stay of 
thine old age? Does thy bereavement en- 
shroud thee like an impenetrable cloud ? Is 
it to thee a mystery, tempting thee to brood 
darkly upon thy trial and to doubt the love 
of the heavenly Father ? If so thou wilt do 
well to restrain thy vagrant will, since peace 
will not come to thee 

*' Through broodings vain 
And half rebellious questioning of God, 
But by a patient seeking to fulfill 
The purpose of his everlasting will." 

In doing this thou wilt surely be led to be- 
lieve and to feel that his love was the root of 
thy affliction; and in seeing that thou wilt 
be able to nestle thy heart on the pillow of 
his peace. 



I02 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

THE LAW OF SERVICE is a Universal law. 
SERVICE. j^ii nature obeys it. The sun 
serves every green and every living thing. 
The mountains serve the rivers, which in 
their turn serve the ocean. . Every thing in 
nature serves man. Man in his turn serves 
his fellow-man. Jesus made himself the 
servant of all, saying, " I came not to be min- 
istered unto, but to minister." What and 
who is he, therefore, who seeks to escape his 
obligation to serve either his fellow-men* or 
his Creator ? Is he not foolish, in that he at- 
tempts the impossible, since, struggle as he 
may, he must remain bound with the chains 
of this universal law ? Serve his fellow in 
some way he must, either willingly or un- 
willingly. If he be endowed with nothing 
higher than the wisdom of common sense 
he will search for the extent of his obliga- 
tions both to God and man, adopt for his 
rule of action the motto of an ancient prince, 
and say, *^ I serve," to every man to whom 
his service is due, and especially to Christ, 
to whom he is debtor for his life and all that 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 103 

appertains to life. He v;ho is unwilling to 
serve others is himself unworthy to be 
served. 

LIVING IN THE- INSTEAD of living in the 
PRESENT. present moment, taking " a 
child's pure delight " in every gift of God's 
rich goodness, some minds form a habit of 
flinging the present from them as if it were 
only ''the rind of some sweet future," which 
when it comes proves "bitter to the taste." 
Happy, therefore, is that man who sucks 
pure enjoyment from every passing mo- 
ment, rejoicing in God, feasting on the gifts 
of divine love now in his possession, and 
learning to leave future sources of delight 
and all "unborn griefs" in his loving 
hands, 

" Knowing that his mercy ever will endure." 

SIN'S AVENG- That men will reap as they 
ING ANGEL, g^^^. '^ ^ ^j.^^j^ taught both by 

observation and by inspiration. Nevertheless, 
men will persist in hoping that they will 



I04 Faith, H(jpe, Love, Duty. 

gather grapes from the sowing of thistle-seeds. 
To such Schiller wisely sa^^s: 

** Who sows serpents' teeth, let him not hope 

To reap a joyous harvest. Every crime 
Has in the moment of its perpetration 
Its own avenging angel — dark misgiving. 
An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.'* 

And that misgiving is the shadow of the 
penalty incurred by guilt — a penalty which 
involves final separation from all goodness, 
from all who are good, and from the God of 
the goodness rejected for the sake of the sin. 

Such are the fluctuations of 

AT THE 

DROWNING- business and the ups and 

POINT. 

downs of social life that, as 
Hawthorne observes, '' Somebody is always 
at the drowning-point." A moment's thought 
of what submergence beneath the waves of 
bankruptcy implies begets a shudder in a 
healthy mind for the victim of financial ruin. 
Nevertheless, there are men in society who plan 
to build up their own fortunes by schemes 
that involve the misfortunes of others. Like 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 105 

wreckers on an iron-bound coast such finan- 
ciers burn false lights to turn their associates 
on to rocks and shoals whereon their business 
barks must go to pieces. And when they see 
their victims at the drowning-point they rub 
their own guilty hands gleefully and reckon 
up the value of the gains they have made 
from the losses of the wrecked ones. O, the 
heartiessness of human selfishness ! Of 
course no real Christian can be even a part- 
ner with such financial wreckers, for he ac- 
knowledges the authority which said to the 
Christians of Corinth, ^' Let all that ye do be 
done in love" (R. V.). Did love ever plan 
the ruin of another ? 

A VERBAL CON- ^^ ^^^ visiou of heaven John 
TRADiCTiON. ^^^ ^^e Church as a bride ar- 
rayed in fine linen, clean and white; for the 
fine linen is the righteousness of the saints — 
that is, of the sanctified souls composing the 
Church. Hence the fitness of the remark by 
a Scottish writer, that " the idea of having 

heaven without holiness is like the idea of 

8 



io6 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

having health without being well. It is a 
contradiction in ternis." 

The worldliness of men is 

HERMIT LIVES. ., • . , i 

not determined by the spheres 
in which they move, but by the affections 
which reign within them. Vinet justly re- 
marks: ^' Many a hermit lives in the world, 
many a man of the world lives in solitude." 
Thus a very active, busy man, while handling 
merchandise and doing much business in the 
marts of trade, may be maintaining secret 
intercourse with his Lord and looking for 
divine approval of his every transaction. On 
the contrary, a woman who lives chiefly at 
home may be constantly fretting because she 
cannot live stylishly, dress extravagantly, and 
be recognized as one of the queens of society. 
Her life is passed in comparative solitude, 
yet her soul is rent and torn by the storms of 
worldly passion which sweep through it day 
by day. The former is " in the world, yet 
not of it; " the latter does not move in the 
active world, yet, being filled with its spirit, is 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 107 

manifestly ''of it." The real life of the 
former is hidden from the multitude around 
him as much as if he were a hermit of the 
desert ; the visible life of the latter, though 
inactive and in a measure solitary, is never- 
theless as thoroughly worldly as if it were 
spent in the crowded saloons of gayety. 

A SHOCKING What does that man do 
PRAYER. ^yY^Q repeats the Lord's 
Prayer, saying, " Forgive us our trespasses as 
we forgive them who trespass against us," 
while his heart is full of wrath against his 
neighbor because of some real or imaginary 
offense ? He prays, but for what ? Not for 
pardon, but ''for a curse on his own head." 
His request is equivalent to asking Heaven 
not to forgive him. What a shocking prayer ! 

PICTURES OF Every wrong act resembles 
^^^* a statue with two faces, in 

that when viewed before committed its de- 
formities are hidden behind its fascinations, 
and after it has been done its criminal aspect 



io8 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

stands out in bold relief. Hence even pros- 
perous guilt regrets that its gains were not 
innocently won. And there are few men 
who, in their reflective moments, do not feel 
with Wordsworth in these lines : 

** O, that our lives, which flee so fast, 

In purity were such, 
That not an image of the past 

Should fear that pencil's touch !" 

By *' that pencil " the poet meant the con- 
science brooding remorsefully over past deeds 
of evil. Yet the "pencil touch" of con- 
science is but a rough outline compared with 
that perfect photograph of all his unpardoned 
meannesses which will flash upon the sinner's 
eyes when in the judgment-day the book of 
doom shall be opened. What shame, what 
sjlf-reproach, what despair those fearful re- 
productions of his sin will awaken in his 
trembling breast I But O, blessed fact ! to- 
day those pictures of sin already drawn may 
be blotted out in the precious blood of Christ 
and grace obtained whereby neither con- 
science within nor the book of doom in 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 109 

heaven shall have occasion hereafter to draw 
aught but pictures of pure deeds which shall 
be to their doer not a cause of remorse, but 
"a joy forever." 

LOOKING THE That man errs who con- 
WRONG WAY. demns himself because his 
experience is not precisely like that of some 
other person of whom he reads or with whom 
he converses. A closer study of human nat- 
ure would convince him that '* in these deep- 
est, most secret workings of the soul no one 
man's experience will exactly fit in with that 
of any other man." The life of faith is sus- 
tained and guided by looking, not unto other 
men, but " unto Jesus.** 

'* Max is his own star " is a 
HIS OWN star. 

poetic statement of that proud 
disposition to live a self-centered, self-guided 
life which is characteristic of fallen human 
nature. Rejecting Him who is the '' day-star " 
set in the moral heavens to guide them to 
their proper destiny, men perversely choose, 



no Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

as Isaiah puts it, '^ to walk in the Hght of your 
[their] own fire, and in the sparks that ye 
[they] have kindled," thereby despising the 
divine guidance of Christ, the '* morning 
star," and reckoning their own purblind, wis- 
dom a safer guide than the perfect wisdom of 
the Son of God. Is not this man's topmost 
height of folly ? As to its fatal consequences 
the rejected wisdom of God says, " This shall 
ye have of mine hand ; ye shall lie down in 
sorrow." What a destiny ! 

FICKLE AS Fickle as the wind is the 
THE WIND, unsanctified human heart. A 
young disciple, speaking of himself, once 
said, " Now the pulse beats with love to 
Jesus; now it beats responsively to some car- 
nal liking." But when his faith had matured 
he exclaimed, '' How blessed to be ever rest- 
ing on the arm of the Beloved ! His arm is 
revealed in the word of the Gospel, and we 
lean on it by simple confidence of faith." 
Yes, it is faith working by love which cures 
fickleness and enables the purified believer 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty, hi 

to exclaim, ''It is God that girdeth me with 
strength and maketh my way perfect ! " 

To one who is saiUns; out of 

AN UN- ^ 

CLOUDED port the city he is leaving 

REALITY. r I- 11 

appears first dim and then 
unreal, while to him who is sailing into the 
harbor that city is an ever-increasing, un- 
clouded reality. It is even so with heaven. 
To the lovers of this world it is as a city out 
of sight, a mere cloud-land, an unsubstantial 
dream. But to those who are seeking it by 
faith, and approaching it as to their home, it 
is as real as their own consciousness. Their 
eyes behold its grandeur, their ears catch 
echoes of its songs, their hearts leap with 
rapture at the thought of soon seeing Him 
whom their souls love. To them there is 
nothing less unreal, nothing more real, than 
the many mansions of their Father's house. 

THE FOLDED ^^ Stand beside the *' folded 

TENT. tent " of one's departed friend 

wTth a faith that can look into heaven and 



112 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

confidently say, " I shall go to him, but he 
shall not return to me," is to have the sting 
taken out of one's bereavement. To Him 
who is well stricken in years there is, in ad- 
dition to this gladsome expectation of reunion, 
the certainty that his separation from the 
friend of his youth and manhood will be 
but for a short time. Placing his hand ten- 
derly on the marble brow of the dead he can 
say, as Longfellow said of his friend Charles 
Sumner, 

** Thou hast but taken the lamp and gone to bed ; 

I stay a little longer, as one stays 

To cover up the embers that still burn." 

A beautiful image this of the delightful fact 
that the aged Christian who weeps at the 
grave of his friend will soon joyously clasp 
his hand again in the beautiful land which 
knows no death. 

IMAGINARY ^^^^^ P^ople have real 

TROUBLE. trouble and find strength of 

character, as athletes do, by contending for 

victory. Others, having no real occasion for 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 113 

anticipating evil in the future, live amid 
imaginary dangers and are disturbed by grin- 
ning though impalpable images and ground- 
less fears. It has been humorously but truly 
said of such that in many mysteries of life 
and death they resemble the good knight 
Don Quixote when he hung by his wrist from 
the stable window and imagined a tremendous 
abyss yawning beneath his feet. Maritornes 
cut the thong with lightsome laughter, and 
the gallant gentleman fell — ^four inches ! This 
is laughable, yet it fairly illustrates the folly 
of those morbid minds who feed their doubt- 
ing souls on the chaff of idle apprehensions 
unworthy of men who profess faith in God. 
It were far wiser and better for such if they 
were to cast their fears to the winds and 
habitually say, " Yea, though I walk through 
the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear 
no evil, for thou art with me ! " 



DEATH IS ^^ DYING child. Wearied with 

BEAUTIFUL, j^j^g sickncss, looked into the 

face of a sympathizing visitor and exclaimed. 



114 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

*' O, death will be so beautiful ] My Saviour 
loves me!" And death is beautiful to all 
who, like that child, can say, " My Saviour 
loves me ! " For to such is not '* the king of 
terrors " only the conquered slave of Jesus, 
appointed to unbar the gate which stands 
betw^een the present and the future, and to 
admit his Master's friends into his gracious 
presence ? Hence a poet fitly says: 

'' The sting of death doth neither fright the worm 
That spins itself a silken tomb, 
Nor the forgiven child." 

How can a man to whom death ** is gain " 
help exclaiming with the dying child, *' O, 
death will be so beautiful ! My Saviour loves 



The spiritually-minded man 

THE HIGHEST ^ ^ 

POINT OF finds himself lifted to the 

HONOR. , . , , , , 

highest point of honor and 
joy just where he sinks the lowest before God. 
He reaches the goal of rest where he aban- 
dons his last proud aspiration. His virtues 
grow apace when his heart becomes a garden 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 115 

planted with the meekness and lowliness of 
Christ. For he then finds by sweet experi- 
ence that 

" Lowliness is the base of every virtue, 

And he who goes the lowest builds the safest.' 

And this is because God " giveth grace to the 
humble" while "he resisteth the proud." 
Hence it is that folly enthrones itself in the 
house of pride and wisdom builds its nest in 
the heart of the humble man. 

SEEDS OF SIN ^^^j ^^^^ ^^^ daiideUon, bears 
HAVE WINGS, winged seeds, 

"Which through the free heaven fare," 

tak? root, and are seen in the future 

•' Bringing forth many a thought and deed " 

which, like spectral phosphoric lights in the 
bleak morass, lure men into bottomless depths 
of death. Therefore, " No one can be a sin- 
ner and not hand on the sin; " and, says 
Holy Writ, " One sinner destroyeth much 
good." Hence one cannot be a sinner with- 
out being also a destroyer. 



ii6 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

FINGER-POSTS BuTLER built his famous 
IN NATURE. Afialogy on the observation 
by the son of Sirach that '' all things are 
double one against another, and God has 
made nothing imperfect." A later English 
writer puts this pregnant thought into simpler 
phrase, saying, " Every object in nature is a 
finger-post to some great spiritual truth, to 
which it has a typical relation." And then 
he pertinently remarks that the antichristian 
scientist "worships the finger-post," but the 
Christian thinker more wisely passes on to 
the spiritual truth which it indicates: 

" He looks through nature up to nature's God." 

**The things that are made" guide him to 
the study of those " invisible things " which 
it is the especial purpose of the divine word 
to bring within the compass of human thought 
and human affection. 

The most delightful de- 

HEAVEN'S ^ 

SWEETEST scription of heaven is sug- 

PLEASURE. , , XI, 

gested by our Lord s assur- 
ance that where he is there his disciples shall 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 117 

be also. His companionship will be their 
heaven. Hence Cowper says of heaven: 

" There, like streams that feed the garden, 
Pleasures without end shall flow ; 

For the Lord your faith rewarding 
All his bounty shall bestow." 

And all his bounty will be comprehended in 
the unending fellowship of his infinite love. 

DETHRONING ^^ fathom the depth of his 
SELF. Q^yj^ vileness a man needs to 

look not alone on his outward acts, but chiefly 
within himself. Holding God's word in his 
hand for a light, he will then perceive that 
his ^^ self-will is reigning, perhaps uncon- 
sciously, when God's throne ought to be in 
the capital and citadel of his being. This is 
sin in its essence." And of this essential 
monster-sin of self-assertion he will feel 
obliged to confess himself guilty. The dis- 
covery will shock him. If he will be suffi- 
ciently wise, and honest enough with himself 
to let this thought accomplish its proper work 
in his conscience, his experience will speedily 



ii8 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

be such as to enable him to adopt the follow- 
ing lines as its fitting expression. After 
searching vainly for relief in every thing hu- 
man he will say at last, 

" Nothing I find, except the self-same thing, 
One deep expression of tremendous want, 
Nothing that even pretends to seal the grant 

That to the heart's great void shall fullness bring ! 

Then, Saviour, I sink back before thy knee 

And all things find in thee, and only thee." 

By thus dethroning self and enthroning Christ 
his sin is driven out. He is a sinner saved. 

SIN AND THE ^' To show you siu," says 

NEWSPAPER. T\ r^ J \7 u '< 

Dr. C J. Vaughn, a news- 
paper is almost more than a Bible." This is 
true, seeing that the modern newspaper is, 
very largely, a record of the crimes and vices 
of mankind, while it has very little to say of 
the innumerable virtues hourly practiced by 
the good. It needs, therefore, to be read in 
the spirit of one watching against the influ- 
ence of evil, lest by becoming familiar with 
images of evil deeds 

" We first endure, then pity, then embrace." 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 119 
To the senses and to one's 

DEATH AS 

SEEN BY human affections death is re- 

FAITH. 

pugnant, but to the eye of 
faith death has many attractions. Paul cdls 
it ^^gain," and '^being with Christ." To the 
dying thief Christ describes it as being with 
himself " in Paradise." Standing in the light 
of this faith Longfelbw wrote, 

" The grave itself is but a covered bridge 

Leading from light to Hght through a brief darkness.'* 

Blessed, therefore, are they who walk v\-ith 
Christ toward the grave, knowing that he will 
go with them while crossing that bridge and 
beyond it into his glory. 

CLOWN OR ^^ would be difficult for one 
KING ? standing at a distance to dis- 

tinguish a clown from a king, provided both 
were enthroned and clothed in robes of roy- 
alty. It is often correspondently difficult for 
men to distinguish a nominal from a real 
Christian. Externally they may closely re- 
semble one another. The difference may be 
chieily in principle, v>^hich is invisible except 



I20 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

to Him who sees the roots of men's actions, 
sounds the depths of their emotions, and 
knows whether one's religious Ufe is the out- 
grovrth of a regenerated heart or the sickly- 
blossom of self-love and empty sentiment. 
He knows how to discriminate between him 
who is truly spiritually-minded and him who, 
while paying outward respect to religion, 
** abuses the freeness of grace to looseness, 
and security and the power of grace to negli- 
gence and laziness." Blessed, therefore, is 
that man whom the all-seeing Redeemer rec- 
ognizes as a true-hearted disciple ! 

That evanojelical Christians 

PAINFUL ^ 

DEATH- *^ die well " is a fact demon- 

SCENES, , , , 111 

strated by unnumbered death- 
beds. But Costabel, a Vaudois pastor, speak- 
ing to some English travelers of papists in 
Italy, said that " the fear of death among 
them is awful," and that he often witnessed 
"the most painful death-scenes." Their 
priests perform their empty ceremonies over 
their expiring bodies, but cannot give them 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 121 

peace of mind; " and,'' said he, ^^they die in 
agonies of terror." That papist death-scenes 
are of this character every-where, except in 
cases of real spirituality, of which no doubt 
there may be not a few in that great Church, 
is hardly to be doubted. How can the words 
of a priest quiet the consciences of men whose 
religious life is wholly made up of formal, 
semi-idolatrous observances which neither 
renew the heart nor purify the life ? Mani- 
festly the mummery of ^'extreme unction'* 
cannot effect that for which personal faith in 
the blood of Christ is alone sufficient. But 
what a motive there is in such " painful death- 
bed scenes " for faithful missionary work 
among the deluded followers of Romanism ! 

WHAT GOD Why is it that men doubt 
WISHES. the willingness of God to 
grant them pardon and grace ? " As I live, 
saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the 
death of him that dieth." And Christ said, 
" If ye, being evil, know how to give good 
gifts unto your children, how much more shall 

9 



122 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

your Father which is in heaven give good things 
to them that ask him ? " Surely " the evil heart 
of unbelief " must be both strong and perverse 
in him who, with that divine oath, and this 
divine assurance, taken in conjunction with 
the central fact of the Gospel, that ^*by the 
grace of God, Jesus Christ tasted death for 
every man," can dare to doubt, not the will- 
ingness merely but the infmite desire of God 
to save him. Away then, O doubting soul, 
with thy fears ! They hurt thee; they dis- 
honor God. If thou really desirest mercy, it 
is thine for the asking, for 

" God wisheth none should wreck on a strange shelf; 
To him man is dearer than to himself." 

OUR HEARTHS ^^ every ancient Roman's 
ARE ALTARS, hearth-stone, the fire sacred 
to his /ares, or household gods, was kept 
perpetually burning. Can it be said with 
equal truth that in every Christian household 
a perpetual fire of devotion is kept burning 
on an altar consecrated to domestic worship ? 
Are there not many homes claiming to be 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 123 

Christian in which no such ahar stands ? No 
wonder if in such households there is a lack 
cf that perfect domestic love which it is one 
of the ends of the Christian religion to pro- 
duce; no wonder if in such homes there are 
haunting fears, gnawing anxieties, and timid 
apprehensions of evil, since God is not in- 
voked in joint worship to be their defender. 
And it is no wonder that in those house- 
holds where God is recognized as their 
Lord, and trusted as their protector, their 
inmates look calmly and fearlessly on all 
the ills of life, knowing that, having by 
their common faith made God their shield, 
nothing can harm them without his permis- 
sion, and that consequently they cannot be 
really hurt at all. It is of such a home as 
this that Keble beautifully sings in these 
sweet lines: 

*' Around each pure domestic shrine 
Bright flowers of Eden bloom and twine, 

Our hearths are altars all ; 
The prayers of hungry souls and poor, 
Like armed angels at the door, 

Our unseen foes appall." 



124 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

WAY-SIDE Opportunities for self- 
FLOWERS. improvement and usefulness 
lie along the paths of men like flowers growing 
by the way-side. But he who wills to profit 
by them must pluck and use them, because 
they are as the roses of which Bryant sung: 

" If man come not to gather 

The roses where they stand, 
They fade among their foliage ; 

They cannot seek his hand." 

Alas ! how many neglected opportunities lie, 
like faded foliage, in the past of every human 
life. One cannot review them without blushes 
of shame and sighs of regret. But sighing 
cannot make them other than lost opportuni- 
ties. Yet, if one's regret be honest, it will be 
a spur to the faithful use of such opportuni- 
ties as still lie about one's path, and concern- 
ing which the voice of inspiration is saying, 
"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it 
with thy might ! " 

THE SHAME There are times in the life 

OF SELF. q£ ^ regenerated man in which 

recollections of his past sins rise like black 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 125 

and angry clouds on a summer day between 
his aspiring soul and his Saviour. Such re- 
membrances paralyze his longings for closer 
fellowship with Christ and give birth to a 
stinging sense of shame such as Ezra felt 
when he said, " I am ashamed and blush to 
lift up my face to thee, my God, for our [my] 
iniquities are increased over our [my] head.*' 
This blending of shame and longing is de- 
scribed by Cardinal Newman as 

" These two pains, so counter and so keen, 
The longing for Him when thou seest him not, 
The shame of self at thought of seeing him." 

Relief from these keen pains can be found 
only in a resolute turning of one's thoughts 
away from one's sins to that love of God 
which moved his Son to shed the blood which 
cleanseth from all sin. In presence of the 
thought of God's unbounded love shame 
drops its sting and is transformed into grati- 
tude; faith recovers its strength; love revives 
and bursts into joyous praise, and the pain 
of longing gives place to the sweet satisfac- 
tion of conscious fellowship with the Re- 



126 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

deemer. O, wondrous love, which invites a 
creature once guilty of shameful sins to look, 
not with the blush and pang of shame, but 
with the joy of a happy child, into the face 
of his reconciled Lord, and to sing, 

" Hallelujah ! 
Love and praise to thee belong ! " 

A MARVELOUS ^HE highest and most 
FACT. blessed life is attainable by 

the lowest man. The poorest tramp who 
wanders through the land a homeless vagrant 
is offered the opportunity of acquiring God- 
likeness here and a seat on the Redeemer's 
throne hereafter. The same amazing privi- 
lege lies at the feet of every man, and O, 
marvelous fact ! God beseeches him to pick 
it up and make it his own. Can there be any 
folly equal to that folly which spurns this 
costly, this blood-boiight privilege? If he 
finally rejects it will not the thought of his 
unspeakable folly gnaw the sinner's heart as 
the worm which dieth not ? Will he, can he, 
ever forgive himself ? 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 127 

THE VULTURE ^^ Goethc's " Faust " the hero 
OF REGRET. q£ ^j^^ drama has evil spirits 
placed at his service by Mephistopheles, the 
demon who had led him astray. Faust bade 
them dig a canal on his estate. They took 
their spade and began digging, but when he 
went to inspect their work he found not a 
canal, but a grave ! How like to these mis- 
chievous sprites are men's animal appetites ! 
Choosing to make life a long play-day with 
sensuous pleasure as its chief end, the 
sensualist bids his appetites minister, not to 
his duty, but to his enjoyments. They prom- 
ise him the mirth that is exhaled from the 
wine- cup, the beastly delights of unlawful 
lust, the gratification of a pampered appetite, 
and the jollity of abandoned society. Putting 
faith in these promises, he surrenders his 
whole being to the pursuit of material enjoy- 
ments. With what results ? Behold him in 
a few years sitting on the ruins of his life ! 
Hear him saying in the words of Amiel, **The 
vulture of regret is gnawing on my heart, 
and the sense of irreparable loss chokes me 



128 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

like the iron collar of the pillory. I have 
failed in the task of life, and now life itself 
is failing me ! " Sad spectacle ! And still 
more sad is the darkness of the second 
death into which his guilty spirit is hurled 
when summoned from its ruined body. Is 
the reader tempted to devote his life to 
such pleasures ? He may if he vrill, but, 
as sure as inexorable destiny, " the end of 
these things is death ! '* 

THE LIVING ^ TRULY good man's esti- 
WORM. mate of sin moves him to hate 
it^ to dread it, as his most deadly enemy, and to 
shrink from it as from the attack of a viper. 
Hence, though he may love innocent wit, he 
will not be beguiled into laughter by a pro- 
fane witticism, knowing that he cannot in- 
dulge in such merriment without deadening, 
in greater or less degree, his moral sensibil- 
ity. How can a man smile at sin, even 
though it be inclosed in sweetness, when he 
believes it to be as Bunyan describes it in 
these impressive lines ? — 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 129 

*' Sin is the living worm, the lasting fire, 
Hell sOvon would lose its heat, could sin expire. 
Better sinless in hell than to be where 
Heaven is, and to be found a sinner there. 
One sinless with infernals might do well, 
But sin would make of heaven a very hell." 

Holding such views of sin, one is not sur- 
prised to find the homely poet adding to this 
description the following caution, to which, 
by the way, even the reader may wisely give 
due heed: 

" Look to thyself, then, keep sin out of door, 
Lest it get in, and never leave thee more." 



The autobiooraphy of the 

DANGEROUS tor.; 

BORDER- late Anthony Trollope con- 

LANDS. . ,- , 

tams a passage well worthy 
the consideration of every young man and 
woman. Here it is: *' The regions of abso- 
lute vice are foul and odious. The savor of 
them, till custom has hardened the palate and 
the nose, is disgusting. In these he will hardly 
tread. But there are outskirts on these re- 
gions, in which sweet-smelling flowers seem 
to grow and grass to be green. It is in these 



130 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

border-lands that the danger Hes.'* This is 
true, and it is also a truth not to be gainsaid 
that at the entrance to these border-lands 
Satan stands robed as an angel of light, to 
woo the young, with flattering words, to taste, 
not the vices, O no ! but the seemingly harm- 
less pleasures of sin. It is not to drunkenness, 
but only to the single glass of sparkling wine, 
that he invites; not to the abode of avowed 
profligacy, but to the parlor cotillion; not to 
the gambling-table, but to the friendly game 
of cards at some private fireside; not to the 
companionship of prodigals, but to the fasci- 
nating theatrical performance; not to the 
crime of absolute dishonesty, but to some 
hidden trick of trade or speculation. It is only 
to a little thing, a momentary indulgence, the 
plucking of a rose within the charmed in- 
closure, that the hypocritical devil tempts. 
What he really seeks is to make the tempted 
one false to himself, to duty, and to God. The 
prize the tempter wants is that soul's inno- 
cence. What the tempted one needs in that 
critical moment is incorruptible loyalty, 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 131 

proving itself true in a little thing; power to 
stand immovable against the beginning of 
evil, to refuse to take one step into that bor- 
der-land whose farther side is hell. 

A MAN may hide his sins 

SELF-RUINED. ^ , ^ , 

from the gaze of other men, 
but he cannot conceal them from himself. 
As a Roman poet said, 

" Still in the mind the fault doth lie 
That never from itself can fly." 

Hence in the last day, when the books shall 
be opened, every man will be compelled to 
be a witness against himself. And to noth- 
ing will his self-testimony be more conclusive 
than to the fact that the unbelief by which 
he refused the mercy offered him by Christ 
was his own willful, deliberate act. *^ I am 
self-ruined ! " will be his endless moan. 

SAD MEMO- ^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^ sonnets to his 
RiES. mother Heinrich Heine con- 

fesses that while he could stand before the 
face of a king without a downcast eye he 
could not help being " smit with shy humil- 



132 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

ity *' when in his mother's presence. And he 
ascribes thi.s feeling to the 

" Sad memories that tell 
How many a time I caused thy dear heart pain, 
Thy gentle heart, that loveth me so well." 

In this confession of the poet one finds the 
universal truth that offenses committed in 
youth against the law of filial affection be- 
come "sad memories" in life's after-time. 
The parent's love pardons the fault, but no 
child ever fully forgives himself for having 
wounded a parent's heart. The sad memo- 
ries live on, fretting the soul and begetting 
the profitless cry, '^ O, that I had never 
wounded the loving hearts of my father and 
mother ! " Happy, therefore, are those youths 
who, by honoring their parents, put no acts 
into their lives which can grow into such 
" sad memories " as those which burned 
themselves into the soul of Heinrich Heine ! 

THE SPELL OF There WES beauty in the 

^^^- color and sweetness in the 

taste of the forbidden fruit which grew on 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 133 

the tree of knowledge. To the tempted pair 
in paradise it did not seem possible that to 
taste it would be to bring " death into the 
world with all its woe," albeit the Creator 
had told them it would. Refusing to believe 
the God of truth, they ate it and thereby 
made the world a vast hospital, a theater of 
many woes, an insatiate grave-yard. The un- 
godly man suffers to-day in body, soul, and 
spirit because of that first pregnant act of dis- 
obedience. Yet, despite of what he suffers, 
of what he sees of the fruits of sin in others, 
and of Heaven's warnings against the deceit- 
fulness of sin, he sins on, refusing to believe 
that sin will hurt ////;/, and mocking at the voices 
of God and of the Word which bid him beware! 
Alas for his folly and his fate i since only 

•' Fools make a mock at sin, will not believe 
It carries such a dagger in its sleeve ; 
How can it be, say they, that such a thing. 
So full of sweetness, e'er should wear a sting ? 
They know not that it is the very spell 
Of sin to make men laugh themselves to hell. 
Look to thyself, then, deal with sin no more, 
Lest He that saves against thee shut the door." 



134 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

A PRECIOUS The tear of a penitent sin- 
OFFERiNG. j^gj. jg doubtless one of the 
most precious offerings he can make to his 
justly offended Maker, but it is not, it cannot 
be, a solvent of his guilt nor a purifier of his 
sin-stained nature. To one who thinks that 
tears can purge away sin a Christian poet 
most truthfully sings : 

** You cannot cleanse your heart with tears, 
Though you should weep as many years 
As your great Father, when he sat 
Uncomforted on Ararat. 
This would not help you, and the tear 
Which does not heal will scald and sear." 

That this is true is evident from both Script- 
ure and universal experience. The former 
declares that not tears, but the precious 
blood of Christ, cleanseth from sin; the latter 
shows that no man ever gained either peace 
or purity by the mere shedding of tears, even 
though those tear-drops were the sheddings 
of a truly penitent heart. But whenever 
penitential sorrow has been followed by a 
faith which saw in Christ's blood the price 
paid for human pardon, and said undoubt- 



Faith, Hope, Lovr, Duty. 135 

ingly, " Jesus bore viy sins; 7?iy iniquities were 
laid upon him; I take him to be my Saviour," 
then, in cases as innumerable as the stars, a 
peace, sweet and delightful as the atmosphere 
of paradise, has overspread the heart and 
righteousness has been born into the life. 
Thus the facts in human life are in harmony 
with the theory of the Gospel, which thus be- 
comes constantly self-demonstrative of its 
divinity. Therefore, O, penitent sinner, add 
to thy tears the faith which says, " Christ is 
mine ! " 

There comes to most young 

PURE AS YET. ^ ^ 

souls a moment of powerful 

temptation to some sin which, once committed, 

becomes their life-long tyrant. A critical 

moment that, as the youth's soul stands face 

to face with sin, right on the narrow line 

which divides virtue from vice ! 

" Yet is it pure — as yet ! The crime has come 
Xot o'er this threshold yet ! so slender is 
The boundary that divideth life's two paths." 

Happy is that youth w^ho, when standing on 
that fateful line, looks away from the sin, lifts 



136 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

his eyes heavenward, and, seeing the pitiful 
face of his Redeemer gazing upon him as he 
did on faithless Peter, exclaims with the best 
of Jacob's sons, '^ How can I do this grea' 
wickedness and sin against God ! " 

RUINED The recent experiences of 

PALACES. certain millionaires, whose 
immense fortunes, rapidly accumulated by 
daring and abnormal speculations in w^heat, 
in mines, and other objects of value, have 
dissolved like Aladdin's palace as quickly as 
they were built up, remind one of the follow- 
ing lines from the pen of Goethe: 

" All men, both great and ^mall, are fain 
To weave a web out of their brain, 
While in the middle they sit at ease 
To clip and snip as they may please ; 
Then if a breeze comes some fine day 
To sweep their flimsy threads away, 
Straightway they cry, * What fiendish malice 
To overthrow our splendid palace! " 

How many of such golden palaces have 
crumbled over the heads of the men whose 
cunning seemed for a time to make them 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 137 

masters in the world of finance ! Those men 
played with values as the spider plays with 
his web. They believed themselves invinci- 
ble. They held their millions to be imper- 
ishable and inseparable from their coffers. 
Yet an unexpected melting away of public 
confidence, like a sudden thaw in early spring, 
caused their fortunes to float from them like 
bubbles on a swollen stream. It was not 
** fiendish malice,'* as the poet puts it, that did 
it ; but that invisible, inexorable law which 
pervades nature, penetrates society, and sooner 
or later brings all things into judgment. All 
history proves that whatever is built up on 
false principles, though it may appear to 
flourish a while, is destined to perish in the 
end. Justice, honesty, truth, fairness, are 
alone eternal; but injustice, dishonesty, false- 
hood, and supreme selfishness are shifting 
quicksands sure as destiny to swallow up at 
last whatever structures men in their vain 
pride may erect upon them. Recent facts 
strikingly illustrate this truth, and ought to 

teach our commercial men, our statesmen, 
10 



138 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

and all others that the permanent well-being 
of society cannot be secured by the abnormal 
methods which of late years have taken pos- 
session of our exchanges, our counting-rooms, 
and our political organizations. We must 
reform by giving the second commandment 
a place among our business principles 
and by bringing our political life within the 
sphere of the great truth that righteousness — 
and righteousness only — exalteth a nation. 

THE EGG OF ^HE egg of Unbelief is 
UNBELIEF. hatched in the nest of human 
passions. As Massillon observes: "The yoke 
of faith is never rejected but in order to shake 
off the yoke of duties; and religion would 
never have an enemy were it not the enemy 
of self-indulgence and vice." Thus a fact 
which is a reason why men should embrace 
religion is made an excuse for rejecting it. 

A DISGUISED " To-DAY is a king in dis- 

KiNG. guise," said Carlyle. The 

saying is an odd one, but it expresses a pro- 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 139 

found truth. The kingliness of to-day ap- 
pears in the fact that it holds a royal gift in 
its hands — such a gift as no human king can 
offer, to wit, the opportunity to secure eternal 
life. *' To-day," says the Holy Spirit, ^* if ye 
will hear his voice. . . . Behold, now is the 
accepted time; behold, now is the day of 
salvation." It may also hold the key of a 
man's immortal destiny in that it may have a 
commission from the Master of Life to sur- 
render him into the hands of death. Assur- 
edly to-day is a king, but whether its gifts 
shall be mercies or judgments depends on 
the disposition of each individual to respect 
or disobey the commands of the King of days. 
Behold, now is the day of salvation; it may 
be thy day of evil destiny, O, unregenerate 
man ! 

GOD'S PAY- Memory and conscience are 

MASTERS. God's pay-masters of the 

wages of sin. A man may conceal his vices, 

at least in part, from the gaze of men, or his 

offenses against humanity may be forgiven 



I40 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

by the injured parties, but he can neither 
forgive himself nor forget his own criminaHty. 
His too faithful memory will relentlessly drag 
his evil deeds into the presence of his con- 
science, which will in its turn persist in tort- 
uring him with burning rebukes. Shelley, 
writing from his own sad experience, de- 
scribes this self-judgment of a guilty mind 
with terrible force when he says : 

*• Forget the dead, the past ? O, yet 
There are ghosts that may take revenge for it ; 
Memories that make the heart a tomb, 
Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom, 
And with ghastly whispers tell 
That joy once lost is pain." 

Yes, the joy of lost innocence is replaced with 
the torments of guilt, and thus every man 
tastes, at least in part, the penalty of his sin 
even in this life. He is forced to live in the 
deep shadow cast from the doom of that hnal 
judgment which awaits all who do not by 
timely faith wash out their guilt in the pre- 
cious blood of Christ ! Therefore let him who 
is yet innocent of presumptuous sin seek grace 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 141 

by which to keep his innocence unstained, 
and let him who is steeped in guilt 

" Plunge into the purple flood, 
And rise into the life of God." 

AGNOSTIC Coleridge shows the folly 
FOLLY. q£ agnosticism and atheism in 

the following pertinent lines: 

" Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place, 
Portentous sight ! the owlet Atheism, 
Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon. 
Drops his blue-fringed lids, and holds them close, 
And, hooting at the glorious sun in heaven, 
Cries out, Where is it ? " 

What is this but a poetical putting of the divine 
declaration that none but fools say, " There is 
no God; " for who but a fool would stand in 
the blaze of noon asking, '^ Where is the sun ? " 

Pascal affirms that '' there 

TRUNK VICES. 

are some vices which adhere 
to us only because of others, and which, when 
the trunk is removed, fall away like branches." 
This profound thought has its illustration in 
the "trunk" vice of covetousness, out of 
which there naturally grows the branch vices 



142 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

of falsehood, deception, dishonesty, niggardli- 
ness, and envy. Many men wnose characters 
are disfigured by these latter vices would have 
been true, honest, liberal, and noble-minded 
had they not given place in their affections 
to the trunk vice of covetousness. Who, 
therefore, need wonder at that caution of 
Holy Writ which bids every man beware of 
covetousness ? 

A DYING MAID. When the spiritually- 
EN'S WHISPER, minded Miss Newton was at 
the point of death she whispered to her 
mother, '' Dear mamma, here is my parting 
gift to you — ' For one look to self, take ten 
of Jesus.'" Simple yet golden words were 
these, since to look unto Jesus is to draw life, 
peace, strength, hope, and joy from him as 
the branch draws fruitfulness from the vine 
to which it is united. 

NO SATIETY IN That the **sweetest things 

HEAVEN. shall soonest cloy" no man 

can truthfully deny ; but it does not follow 

that the satiety which kills the life of joy will 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 143 

be known in heaven, as the foolish heart is, in 
its moments of reverie, sometimes tempted to 
fancy. It is assuredly true that religious joy 
does not cloy truly devout souls even here, 
since in none is such joy so rich, so sweet, and 
so abounding as in those who have through 
long years most earnestly sought it. Why, 
then, should it cloy those who, when in the 
realm of the Infinite, with none but spiritual 
tastes and with constantly enlarging capaci- 
ties, will find unlimited food for lofty thought 
and boundless spheres for activity ? No, the 
thought is a suggestion of the tempter, who 
delights to annoy the souls he cannot subdue. 
Away with it, therefore, O, Christian! Fear 
not that there can be satiety in heaven. But 
if you will cherish a fear let it be 

*' Lest an eternity should not suffice 

To take the incasure, the breadth and height 

Of what there is reserved in paradise — 
Its ever-new delight." 

THE BUBBLE There is a Strange fascina- 
REPUTATiON. ^,^^ ^,^ ^^^ "bubble reputa- 
tion," which charms even some good men as 



144 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

soap-bubbles floating in mid-air do little chil- 
dren. To have one's name in the mouth 
of the world, to be sought after, to be treated 
with exceptional deference, to be placed in 
seats of honor, and to be ranked with the 
great men of one's age are prizes which to 
many appear worth winning at the cost of 
painful effort. But are they ? If high repu- 
tation comes to a man as the spontaneous 
tribute of the public to great achievements 
and pure character it doubtless yields a high 
degree of innocent satisfaction, provided he 
does not make it his idol and so become a 
worshiper of himself. In such case it be- 
comes a curse. But even when accepted with 
humility and with due gratitude to Him to 
whom belongs the ability of which it is the 
crown it soon loses its charm, and, as the 
testimony of many great men shows, becomes 
more a burden than a blessing. It is, there- 
fore, folly for any man to fret himself into 
discontent because he cannot win the top- 
most height of his profession. Better far to 
seek the honor which comes from God by 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 145 

doing the very best work -possible to one's 
ability, even though it has to be wrought in 
some quiet sphere unnoticed and unapplauded 
by the changeful voice of the fickle public. 
He who saw Nathaniel under the fig-tree ob- 
serves such a worker, and in the day of his 
presentation before the throne of His glory 
will say to him, " When thou wast faithfully 
toiling in that lowly parish I saw thee ! '' 



DIVINE CON- What infinite condescen- 

DESCENSION. ^[^^^ ^^ ^^ f^^ Q^^ ^^ i^vite 

men to meet him as children meet a father in 
their private chambers ! Yet he has done 
this through his Son, who bids us pray to 
our heavenly Father in the secrecy of our 
closets, and assures us that he will reward 
us openly if we thus talk with him alone in 
our quiet hours. Hence Hannah More fitly 
says : 

' ' The secret heart 
Is fair devotion's temple ; there the saint, 
E'en on that living ahar lights the flame 
Of purest sacrifice which burns unseen, 
Yet not unaccepted." 



146 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

A MAN is capable of decid- 

WHAT IS ^ 

YOUR iNFLU- ing whether his influence is 

ENCE? , - 

tor good or evil, but no man 
can estimate the measure of his influence, 
whether it be good or evil. Longfellow tells 
us that 

" Each one performs his life-work and then leaves it ; 
Those that come after him will estimate 
His influence on the age in which he lived ; " 

but this, though true in part, must be taken 
with qualifications. It is true of such leading 
minds as Wiclif, Erasmus, Luther, Wesley, 
etc., that posterity reaches a just judgment 
concerning the good or evil results of their 
work, but it is never able to estimate, with 
any thing like exactness, the extent of those 
results. None but the omniscient One can 
do this, seeing that no other eye can trace it 
from mind to mind from the moment of its 
birth to the end of time. To a man whose 
influence is evil this thought should loom up 
like a thick cloud burdened with the force of 
a whirlwind. To him who is conscious that 
his work ^* makes for righteousness *' it is as 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 147 

a brilliant rainbow having the promise of a 
divine unfolding in tlie day ot doom which 
will fill him w4th ecstatic and never-ending 
joy. Which is it to thee, O, immortal man, 
a cloud or a rainbow ? 

THE GREATEST ^HO ever heard of a man so 
OF FOLLIES, foolish as even to think of 
mooring his ship in mid- ocean t Such a fool 
was never yet known. Nevertheless, a greater 
folly is committed by the man w4io is so cap- 
tivated by a life of sin as to settle down to its 
commission without a thought of providing 
for the immortal destiny to which, in spite of 
himself, he is being borne. Is he not like 
one trying to cast anchor in a restless, fath- 
omless deep, within which there are resistless 
currents sweeping his bark toward an iron- 
bound shore ? 

HELL IN THE SoME One writing of sin 

HEART. while it is as yet only a concept 

tion soliciting the passions calls it " hell in 

the heart," because the lawless desires it 



148 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

kindles are sparks from the pit of darkness. 
Shakespeare, who was no stranger either to sin 
in prospect or in fruition, puts the difference 
between anticipated and completed sin in these 
expressive lines. Before commission it ap- 
pears 

" A bliss in proof ; but proved, a very woe ; 
Before, a joy proposed ; behind, a dream. 
All this the world well knows ; yet none know well 
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.'' 

To escape this hell of punishment one must 
refuse to enter into the hell of temptation. 
He must not permit the masked tempter to 
kindle those base desires which constitute a 
**hell in the heart." He must trample out 
the first spark, remembering these significant 
words of the apostle James: "When lust 
hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, 
when it is finished, bringeth forth death ! " 

A MiscHiEV- *' ^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ choose the 
ous MAXIM, least," says the proverb 

which often fails from the lips of '^ Mr. 

Worldly Wiseman.'* Applied to merely phys- 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 149 

ical evils the maxim is not obiectionable; but 
where the evils are incral it is false and mis- 
chievous. No man is at liberty to choose to 
do a sinful act under any supposable circum- 
stances. Of the noble ^*army of martyrs" 
now before the throne of God many, perhaps 
most, might have escaped prison, rack, and 
stake by choosing the evil of concession to 
the demands of their persecutors. But had 
they made that choice they would not now 
be numbered with that glorified host. Re- 
member, therefore, O, man of God, that you 
cannot innocently choose a moral evil that 
*^ good may come " either to yourself or 
others. If tempted to do so let your quick, 
firm, final response be, " I can suffer loss; I 
can, if necessary, surrender my fortune and 
my life, but I cannot, I will not, choose to do 
any evil deed which my Saviour wouM pro- 
nounce sinful ! " 

HIS DEATH- An ungodly man who is 

WARRANT. aiiiicted with a mortal disease 

is like a condemned criminal who carries a 



150 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

copy of his death-warrant in his pocket, not 
knowing at what hour he may be summoned 
to meet his doom. To him the death-angel 
is a grim and dreaded executioner. But to 
the "man in Christ " death is not a king of 
terrors, but heaven's smiling messenger to 
conduct him to the audience-chamber of his 
beloved Lord. Dr. Donne gives fine expres- 
sion to a Christian's thought of death in these 
lines: 

" Think then, my soul, that Death is but a groom 
Which brings a taper to the outward room, 
Whence thou spy'st first a glimmering light ; 
And after brings it nearer to my sight ; 
For such approaches doth heaven make in death." 

It was because Paul spied even more than a 
** glimmering light " streaming from the gate 
of heaven that he said, " For me to die is 
gain,'' and " I have a desire to depart, and to be 
with Christ, which is far better " than to live 
in the flesh. Truly, while, to an impenitent 
sinner, death is the dreaded door of doom, to 
the believer in Christ it is the golden gate of 
blessedness I 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 151 

THE SOUL'S Life is opportunity, the 
SEED-TIME, soul's secd-time, the vestibule 
of hell or heaven, as its possessor may choose 
to make it. Its issue will soon be determined, 
for, as Bishop King sung of life, it is 
" Like to the falling of a star, 
Or as the flight of eagles are, 
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue, 
Or silver drops of morning dew, 
Or like a wind that chafes the flood, 
Or bubbles which on water stood : 
E'en such is man, whose borrowed light 
Is straight called in, and paid to-night. 
The wind blows out ; the bubble dies ; 
The spring entombed in autumn lies ; 
The dew dries up ; the star is shot ; 
The flight is past — and man forgot." 

Yes, forgotten on earth, alas, how soon ! but 
not forgotten in the future life. There he 
will have his place forever, in weal or woe, in 
honor or disgrace, an everlasting reaper of 
the seed he sowed during his life on earth. 
The character of that harvest must be as the 
seed sown. Corruption, isolation from God, 
if the sowing now is to the flesh; everlasting 
felicity if the sowing is to the Spirit. To 
which art thou sowing, O, immortal man ? 



152 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

PLANNING FOR MiDWiNTER is the scason in 
THE FUTURE, ^y^ich men form plans for the 
business of the approaching spring and sum- 
mer. The sensualist schemes for opportuni- 
ties to drink from ** Pleasure's full bowls," 
the man of business for large profits, the 
ambitious man for higher honors. Of the 
first it may be said that the pleasure he 
seeks, if quaffed, will "taint his blood" and 
animalize his soul; of the second, that, if too 
ardently sought or unjustly gained, it will 
make him like one who '' chews on stones 
that choke; " and of the third, that it "fats 
not, but fills with smoke." Hence the Chris- 
tian, while planning for the future, will never 
eliminate the thought of righteousness and 
duty to Christ from his schemes, will never 
forget that unholy pleasures, profits, and 
honors are in reality not gains but heavy 
and irreparable losses. Rather, in tha midst 
of his reveries on the near future of his earthly 
life he will readily adopt the sentiments, if not 
the language, of the old poet who quaintly 
sings: 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 153 

*' And whilst my thoughts are greedy upon these. 
They pass by pearls and stoop to pick up peas. 
Such wash and draff is fit for none but swine ; 
And such I am not, Lord, if I am thine. 
Clothe me anew, and feed me then afresh ; 
Else my soul dies, famished and starved with flesh." 

SELF-BLINDED MoLES and earth-worms 
MEN. burrow and thrive in dark- 

ness under the ground, but men are so made 
that Hght is essential to their lives and happi- 
ness. Hence no sane man shuts out the light 
of heaven from his dwelling. Yet there is in 
many a moral insanity which moves them to 
resolutely close their souls against that divine 
light which is as essential to their mental 
peace and joy as sunlight is to their bodily 
well-being. They prefer walking in darkness 
and trampling on truth and duty to walking 
in the light and enjoying that forgiveness of 
sin and that cleansing from all unrighteous- 
ness to which that divine light leads. O, self- 
blinded souls ! Who can estimate what their 
folly costs them here ? Who can even im- 
agine what it will cost them in the here- 
after ? Milton pictures the present difference 
11 



154 Faith, Hope, Love^ Duty. 

between one who walks in the light and one 
who walks in darkness in these expressive 
lines: 

'* He that has light within his own clear breast 
May sit in the center and enjoy bright day ; 
But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts 
Benighted walks under the midday sun ; 
Himself is his own dungeon ! " 

Would the self -blinded man see what awaits 
him in the hereafter? Let him study Christ's 
picture of the rich man and Lazarus as they 
were after death ! 

UNHAPPY Longfellow, in his pos- 

IDLERS. thumous poem, makes Michael 

Angelo describe his idle friend Benvenuto as 

"An artist, 
Richly endowed by nature, but who wraps 
His talent in a napkin, and consumes 
His life in vanities.'* 

Do not these lines portray very many modern 
men and women? Assuredly they fit every 
life that is being spent unguided by high and 
noble purposes and wasted in devotion to 
profitless amusements and idle dreaming over 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 155 

silly, sentimental, sensational fictions. To 
such idlers the necessary occupations of every 
day are regarded as burdensome drudgeries, 
and all they esteem as "life " are the vanities 
which perish in the using, leaving no fruitage 
but the intellectual and moral degradation of 
their unhappy devotees. Unhappy idlers • 
They do not know the sweetness of the fruit 
which earnest business, joined to high moral 
and religious purpose, offers to the taste of 
every busy man. They do not even know 
the measure of their own capacities, which, 
owing to their purposeless indolence, remain 
like undeveloped mines perhaps of exceeding 
richness. A purpose to live for God and 
humanity, put into a life hitherto devoted to 
idle vanities, transforms it, and makes it 
peaceful, beautiful, useful, and happy. Awake, 
therefore, O, listless soul ! and " whatsoever 
thine hand findeth to do, do it with thy 
might." Thy diligence shall make thee rich, 
if net in the gold of the mine, yet in that 
nobler wealth which corruptible gold is too 
poor to buy. 



156 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

TONGUES OF Calumny, savs Sir Arthur 
CALUMNY. Helps, can make a cloud 
seem a mountain; can even make a cloud 
become a mountain. Did it not make the 
Christ's simple habit of eating ordinary food 
the basis of a charge that he was a wine-bib- 
ber and a glutton ? How base a thing it 
is! Inspiration affirms that the calumniator's 
false tongue is ^' set on fire by (R. V.) hell.'* 
Satan, the malicious liar, prompts him who 
invents a lie to injure his neighbor's repu- 
tation, and thereby brings him into close 
kinship with himself. Who can wonder, 
therefore, at the pointed declaration of St. 
James, that the possession of an unbridled 
tongue is conclusive evidence of self-decep- 
tion and of a hypocritical religious profes- 
sion ? Is any man base enough to defend 
a calumniator ? 



Few things prove the real- 

HEAVEN'S ^ / 

OWN SWEET- ity of the spiritual life more 

NESS. , . 1 1 

stnkmgly than the effect 
which close intimacy with Christ has upon 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 157 

human character. That effect is beautifully 
expressed in these lines: 

"As some rare perfume, in a vase of clay, 
Pervades it with a fragrance not its own, 

So when Christ dwelleth in a mortal soul, 

All heaven's own sweetness seems around it thrown." 

No one inhaling the perfume of the vase 
could reasonably doubt the presence of some- 
thing not clay. Is it not equally reasonable 
to believe that spiritual beauty in character 
must come from a power in it more than hu- 
man ? 

NOT LOATH TO " ^^^^ V^^ willing to die ?" 
^^^* inquired one addressing his 

dying friend. The aged sufferer turned his 
filmy eyes upon his questioner and said with 
energy, '* Let him be loath to die who is loath 
to be with Christ." Yet some Christians 
cling to life with such tenacity as to shrink 
from death. Good Richard Baxter is some- 
what severe on such. He says of them: "As 
the prince, who would have taken the lame 
beggar into nis coach and he refused, said to 
him, ^Thou well deservest to stick in the 



158 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

dirt/ so may God say to the refusers of rest, 
* You well deserve to live in trouble.' " This 
is, perhaps, in a measure, unjust to some 
really good men whose interest in the present 
life is so deep as to weaken their aspirations 
after a present heaven. Nevertheless, such 
men need be slightly suspicious of such an 
interest in this life as prevents them from 
heartily saying with Paul, ** For to me to live 
is Christ, but to die is gain." 

WHAT WE The things which we see are 
CANNOT SEE. Qj^jy shadows of things un- 
seen. What we see is perishable, what we 
cannot see is imperishable. The visible 
world is made up of phantoms which, like 
ourselves, are gliding toward their hour of 
dissolution. The eternal is the only real, 
and that lieth above and beyond the temporal. 
God has given us a desire to reach the eternal, 
a presentiment that we may attain to it, and 
a revelation confirming our presentiment, and 
meeting and guiding our desire to its fulfill- 
ment. Who, then, but a fool or a madman, 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 159 

will limit his labors to the accumulation of 
the perishable ? Who but tlie willfully un- 
wise will incarnate in the dust upon which 
their feet trample those aspirations after the 
infinite which, if permitted to guide their lives, 
would lead them from the unrest of the tem- 
poral to the blissful restfulness of the eternal ? 

iRREPRESSi- Some good men are so irre- 
BLE MEN. pressible, especially at camp- 
meetings, that they will speak regardless of 
the proprieties of time, place, or circumstance. 
Wesley had such a man in one of his early 
Conferences, who insisted on telling his ex- 
perience during a business session. Charles 
W^esley cried out, " Stop that man from speak- 
ing ! Let us attend to business !" But the 
warm-hearted brother kept on speaking, heed- 
less of his rebuke. Charles continued, " Un- 
less he stops I'll leave the Conference." 
Wesley, who was enjoying the good man's 
words despite their untimeliness, cooled his 
brother's rising anger by quietly saying, 
*' Reach him his hat!" Perhaps Charles 



i6o Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

deserved this witty retort for his impatience 
with the spiritually-minded speaker. Yet his 
anger was no justification of that irrepressibil- 
ity which excited it by doing violence to the 
fitness of things. Emotional men should re- 
member that there is a time to speak and a 
time to keep silence even about spiritual joys, 
and that their '' good " may be so unwisely 
displayed as '4o be evil spoken of." 

IDEAL ^"^^ John says love in be- 

PERFECTiON. lievers is, or may be, " made 
perfect." How, then, ask some, can there 
be further growth in a perfect Christian life ? 
One answer is that there is an infinite dis- 
tance between absolute perfection and that 
perfection in love which John teaches. Look- 
ing at the former, the Christian, however rich 
his attainments, will always say with Paul, 
" not as though I had already attained, either 
were already perfect." Even in heaven there 
will be an ideal perfection toward which the 
redeemed will forever tend, but which they, 
being finite, will never reach. Absolute per- 



Faith, Hope, Love^ Duty. i6i 

fection belongs to God only. Nevertheless, 
it is our sweet privilege to reach after it and 
to approximate toward it. 

In his Imaginary Conver- 

A HARD HIT. 

sations Landor makes one of 
his characters, while talking of the Italian 
language, say, *' Governare means to gaveim, 
and to wash the dishes. This, indeed, is not 
so absurd at bottom; for there is gener- 
ally as much dirty work in the one as in the 
other." This is a hard but deserved hit at 
those administrators of government who too 
often feel compelled, like Pilate, to sacrifice 
justice, right, and purity at the clamorous 
bidding of selfish politicians. Their submis- 
sion to such demands is, however, never a 
real necessity; for a wrong act can never be 
necessary to a right result, either in a govern- 
ment or in a private individual. He who 
succumbs to a wrong, therefore, only demon- 
strates the unsoundness and weakness of his 
own character. A truly great man will never 
degrade himself by saying " I feel compelled " 



i62 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

to any demand which requires him to sacri- 
fice his convictions of duty. 

Dr. Coke once solicited and 

COKE'S 

PERSUASIVE obtained a missionary contri- 
POWER. ... . . , 

bution from a captam m the 

British navy. Meeting a friend the same day, 
the officer said, "Pray, sir, do you know any 
thing of a little fellow who calls himself Dr. 
Coke, and who is going about begging money 
for the missionaries?" The gentleman re- 
plied, "Yes, I know him well." The cap- 
tain rejoined, ^' He seems to be a heavenly- 
minded little devil. He coaxed me out of 
two guineas this morning." That Coke could 
coax such a gift from an irreligious man 
illustrates his persuasive powers. The para- 
doxical phrase by which the captain described 
him proves the profound spirituality of his 
appeal. It evidently made that godless sailor 
feel that Coke was indeed the messenger of 
God pleading for help to save the world. 
And is not this ihe spirit in which all mis- 
sionary appeals should be made ? 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 163 

AN UGLY CowpER uscs a significant 

SMUTCH. £g^^j.e in The Task. Describ- 
ing a "plump convivial parson," who was 
both magistrate and minister, he bids his 
reader " examine well his milk-white hand " 
on which **here and there an ugly smutch 
appears." The man had touched corruption 
in the shape of a bribe. Hence the " ugly 
smutch " on his palm. Here the poet has 
given us a startling typical illustration of the 
really appalling truth that corruption of every 
form leaves an " ugly smutch," not merely on 
a " milk-white hand," but also on the con- 
science. It defaces character. The act may 
be forgotten, but the ^'ugly smutch " remains 
to fill the guilty with the fiery pangs of self- 
reproach whenever he takes time to look at 
himself as he is reflected in the divine mirror 
— the word of God. Should he fail to see 
himself as God sees him until he has leaped 
into eternity he will find the "ugly smutch " 
made by his sin on his character to be in- 
effaceable. There is no fountain for sin in 
hell. But here, thanks be to our merciful 



164 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

Lord ! the '^ ugly smutch," he it ever so large 
or black or hateful, may be washed out by 
that precious blood which cleanseth from all 
sin. 

FITNESS TO Neither willingness nor 
^^^- desire to die is proof of fit- 

ness to meet one's final doom. When the 
irascible Walter Savage Landor thought him- 
self on the brink of death he said, ^' W^hat a 
pity Death should have made two bites of a 
cherry ! He seems to grin at me for saying 
so and to shake in my face as much of a fist 
as belongs to him. But he knows I never 
cared a fig for his menaces, and am now quite 
ready to let him have his own way. ... I 
take it uncivil in Death to invite and then to 
balk me. It was troublesome to walk back 
when I found he would not take me in. I do 
hope and trust he will never play me the same 
trick again." If this was irreverent trifling 
with a serious matter it was, no doubt, sin- 
cere. Landor was disgusted with life which 
his own lawless action had made thorny and 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 165 

vexatious; but he had no fitness for Death 
whom he invited. He was scholarly, keen in 
intellect and wit, a genius, indeed, but he 
knew nothing of spiritual religion. He did 
not fear to die because he was physically 
brave and spiritually blind. For the same 
reasons the wicked often ^' have no bands in 
their death." Nevertheless, their fearless 
leap into eternity involves, as in the case of 
Dives, a terrible waking. He only is fit to 
die whose willingness is the happy result of 
faith in Him who by dying conquered death. 

souL-WHiTE- The key-note to Christ s 
NESS. preaching was, ''Blessed are 

they which do hunger and thirst after righte- 
ousness, for they shall be filled." Hence the 
key-note to a genuine Christian life is right- 
eousness. " Virtue, virtue, always virtue/' 
soul-whiteness, purity of conduct. All his 
faith in Christ, all his prayers, all his endeav- 
ors, all his hopes, will be but as the "baseless 
fabric of a vision," unless they lead him to be 
" good as God is good, righteous as God is 



i66 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

righteous, holy as God is holy." And O, 
blessed truth, Christ to the believer is the 
end of the law for righteousness ! 

gyjL Thoughts on things evil are 

THOUGHTS. j^Q|- necessarily evil thoughts. 
All the vile deeds of men and devils are al- 
ways present to the mind of God, who is, 
nevertheless, infinitely and unchangeably pure. 
In a vastly lesser degree the story of human 
corruption is brought by reading and obser- 
vation daily before the Christian, but it does 
not necessarily defile his soul. Yet if, in- 
stead of awakening strong repulsion, it begets 
sympathy witTi wrong and desire for forbid- 
den indulgences, it then becomes a source of 
defilement. His thoughts are then evil 
thoughts — birds of ill-omen to be instantly 
driven away by fervent prayer. 

greeting the ^ MISSIONARY when living 

SUNRISE. among the Fuegeans heard 

them shouting and howling at sunrise. Asking 

the reason of these morning cries, he was told 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 167 

by a native, "People very sad; cry very 
much." Thus he learned that the daily 
misery of their lives had taught them to give 
a pathetic greeting to the sunrise as ushering 
in the beginning of another evil day. Let 
the reader contrast with these gloomy fore- 
bodings the joyous morning anticipations 
which fill the breasts of believers in Christ, 
who, beholding the first beams of every new 
day, can sing with the saintly Keble, 

" New mercies each returning day 

Hover round us while we pray; 
New perils past, new sins forgiven, 

New thoughts of God, new hopes of heaven." 

What a vast gulf lies between these opposite 
states of mind ! Yet, thanks be to God ! 
Christianity can bridge it. Teach the now 
wretched Fuegean to know Jesus, and his 
sunrise howls will be replaced with sunrise 
thanksgivings and joyous anticipations. Who, 
then, that is worthy to be called by the name 
of Christ will fail to do his utmost to send 
our night-transmuting Gospel to the ends of 
the earth ? 



i68 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

CORRECT SELF- HUMILITY is not self-dcprc- 
VALUATioN. ciation, but correct self-valua- 
tion. The word comes to us from humilis 
and humus ^ the ground; not under the ground, 
but on it. That is, it signifies that the hum- 
ble man sees himself in his true and proper 
relations both to God and man. Looking 
to the former, he sincerely says, ^' I noth- 
ing have, I nothing am." Absolutely de- 
pendent, inherently impure, essentially help- 
less, he sums up his condition in the simple 
lines: 

** I'm a poor sinner and nothing at all, 
But Jesus Christ is my all and in all." 

Looking to his fellow-creatures, he sees noth- 
ing of which he can boast in their sight. He 
may properly enough be conscious of genius, 
talent, culture, gifts, or social status superior 
to many, since humility is never at war with 
truth; but that knowledge does not elate 
him, because the humbleness of his mind 
moves him to ask, " What have I that I have 
not received t Strike the grace and provi- 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 169 

dence of my Lord from my life, and what 
should I have left?*' Thus he does not 
glory in himself, but in God; and his humil- 
ity clothes him in a robe which is beautiful 
in the sight of men, because it was woven in 
the looms of heaven. 

TAKING ROOT -^^ ^^^^ would taste the 
DOWNWARD, rapture of spiritual fellow- 
ship with his heavenly Father must first sink 
into the depths of humility at his feet. The 
saintly Lady Huntingdon learned this sweet 
secret by experience, and she told it to Dr. 
Doddridge m these words: "Did we enough 
take root downward we should bear more of 
this fruit upward. 'Tis humility must make 
us ascend by the fiery chariot. That divine 
Being whom my soul most delights in shows 
me my lesson in these few words: * Learn of 
me, for I am meek and lowly.' " The count- 
ess spoke the truth, for God is never visible 
to him who is on the mount of pride, but 
only to him who abides in the beautiful vale 

of humble love. 
12 



lyo Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

FORBIDDEN ^' They have made void thy 
MARRIAGES, law," Said the psahiiist, when 
speaking of men who paid formal respect to 
God's worship but refused to incorporate his 
precepts into their practice. They were seek- 
ing to divorce reHgion from moraHty. Doubt- 
less such men w^ere ready to say with senti- 
mental w^armth, ^' We love thy commandments 
above gold," but they could not add, as did 
the psalmist, "We hate every false way," in- 
asmuch as their professions of admiration for 
their national religion were essentially false 
in that they did not permit their creed to 
regulate and mold their morals. False ways 
were the very things they did not hate, but 
love. Those Jewish Antinomians have always 
had their imitators in the Christian Church. 
They are found in all denominations to-day 
vainly endeavoring to wed the immoral prac- 
tices of business, politics, and worldly living 
to faith in the pure-minded Christ. Vain en- 
deavor ! God has put his ban on that unholy 
marriage. Between a deliberately bad life 
and a living faith there is a ^' great gulf fixed." 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 171 

The price of the faith is the renunciation of 
the evil deeds; and he who professes the 
former while practicing the latter is either 
a conscious hypocrite or the victim of Satanic 
delusion. "What doth it profit though a 
man say he hath faith and have not works ? 
Can faith save him ? ... As the body with- 
out the spirit is dead, so faith without works 
is dead also." 

IN PURSUIT OF ^^^^ folly o( the fabled dog 
SHADOWS. ^yj^Q jQg|. j^jg meat by leaping 

after its shadow in the stream is not to be 
compared with the folly of that man who 
studies to prolong his present life while neg- 
lecting to secure his interests in the life 
eternal. His utmost care cannot add much 
to the length of the former; but his neglect 
of the latter, if continued, must involve him 
in endless, irremediable ruin. Thus by his 
eagerness to secure the pleasant things of 
this life, which is but as a shadow of the 
future, he loses the life everlasting, which 
contains the only substantial things on which 



172 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

souls can feed, grow, be truly satisfied, and 
really happy. Is there any folly to which 
such folly can be fitly compared ? Surely, the 
dog in the fable was wise in comparison with 
him who to do his own pleasure in the life 
that nov/ is dooms himself to toil forever on 
the trc-ad-mill of retribution ! 

OUR WHITEST How eloquent onc would be 
PEARLS. j£ Qj-^g could but givc full ex- 
pression in speech to the brilliant thoughts 
which one has in moments of mental and 
emotional elevation! But, said the poet, 

'*Our whitest pearls we never find, 
Our ripest fruit we never reach, 

The flowering moments of the mind 
Drop half their petals in our speech." 

This is one of the limitations of human 
power. Yet even with this limitation what 
wonders have been wrought through human 
speech by such men as Wesley and other 
great revivalists ! But, be it remembered, 
especially by the preacher, that it is the 
power of the Holy Ghost in imperfect human 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 173 

speech which makes it mighty to break that 
hardest of rocks — a hmiian heart petrified by 
sin. 

SELF-INTRO- ^^^ much self-introspcction 
SPECTiON. ig ^Q^ profitable to either 
intellect or heart. This truth is oddly yet 
expressively put by Professor Amiel in his 
journal. He says: " The hankering after self- 
knowledge is punished, like the curiosity of 
Psyche, by the loss of the thing sought. The 
goose lays no more eggs from the moment 
she begins trying to find out why her eggs are 
gold." Of course, the professor does not 
here condemn all reasonable search after self- 
knowledge, but only that morbid self-intro- 
spection which breeds melancholy and de- 
spair. Hence, though it is well to know one's 
self to be both sinful and morally helpless 
apart from the mercy of God, it is not well, 
but ill, to keep self so completely before one's 
mental eye as to exclude its vision of Jesus. 
The victories of faith are v>'on, not by looking 
into one's self, but by ^Mooking unto Jesus." 



174 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

OUR RUDE BAD ^HE devout Kcblc, in one 
THOUGHTS. q£ i^jg devotional poems, asks 
what a man's friends would do if Heaven 
loaned them its light to see 

" The rude bad thoughts that in our bosom's night 
Wander at large, nor heed love's gentle thrall." 

Answering his own question, he assumes that 
the sad disclosure would cause one's friends 
to shun and leave one friendless and to *' die 
unwept." • He then prays to the merciful 
One whom he addresses as, 

•* Thou who canst love us, though thou read us true." 

In this last line there is a most comforting 
thought to the believer, who is often baffled 
in his moments of prayer and meditation by 
the host of '^ rude bad thoughts " which will 
persist in coming up, like troops of unbid- 
den ghosts, from the hidden depths of his 
heart to vex his soul. How he hates himself 
because of their obstinate persistence ! And 
how often he is tempted to believe that his 
Lord turns from him in holy disgust ! But 
not so. His Lord is very pitiful, and, seeing the 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 175 

sfri/ggldoi his follower to drive away these rude 
troubles of his soul, he loves him still. Be of 
good cheer, therefore, O, tortured disciple ! 
1 hink of the greatness of the love that clings 
to thee despite those vain thoughts; for no soon- 
er will thy mind have fairly taken hold of his 
imao-e than all thv vain thoughts will have van- 
ished like morning mists before the risen sun. 

A LEAP IN THE LORD CHESTERFIELD, notO- 

DARK. rious both for wit and infidel- 

ity, was so charmed by ^\^litefield's preaching 
that Lady Huntingdon vrrote cf him to Dr. 
Doddridge saying, ** Sometimes I do hope for 
dear Lord Chesterfield." But her ladyship's 
hope was vain. The proud nobleman 
jested and said that death was only a ** leap 
in the dark," until he was summoned to test 
his skeptical theory by actual experience. 
Then says Lady Huntingdon, who saw him a 
few hours before he died, " The blackness of 
darkness, accompanied by even/ gloomy hor- 
ror, thickened most awfully around his dying 
moments." Thus shadows cf the " outer 



176 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

darkness *' fell fearfully upon his dark, de- 
spairing soul when he made the fatal leap of 
which he had delighted to jest. Five years 
later his widow, who had followed the coun- 
sel which he had slighted, was called to pass 
the same mystic gate. To her, however, it 
was not a leap in the dark, but an ascent to 
eternal light. In the crucial moment she 
gazed, with affection in her glance, on Lady 
Huntingdon, and exclaimed, "O, my friend, 
I have hope — strong hope — through grace ! ** 
Then seizing the hand of the countess with a 
convulsive grasp, she cried, " God be merci- 
ful to me a sinner ! " The next moment her 
humble, trusting soul was in heaven. What a 
measureless distance lay between these two 
deaths ! Yet what was that distance but the 
difference between willful unbelief and peni- 
tential faith? Hast thou that faith, O, im.- 
mortal man ? 

LET HIM The worst thing that can 

ALONE. happen to a sinning man is to 

be let alone. The loss of health, of friends, 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 177 

of fortune, or of position may be repaired, 
but vvhen a man, by deliberate determination 
to continue in sin, moves God to say, *^He 
is joined to liis idols, let him alone ! " he 
suffers an irreparable loss. Henceforth the 
devil is his despotic master, and his evil pas- 
sions lord it over his conscience, his reason, 
his will. Unhappy man ! What worse thing 
could befall thee ? 

DIVINE GRA- I^^" forgiving human sin God 
ciousNESs. (jQ^g [^ ^yi^Y^ ^ breadth of gra- 

ciousness which inflicts no wound on the par- 
doned man*s self-respect. '^I will forgive 
their iniquity, I will remember their sin no 
more," is his promise. Once forgiven human 
sin is as if it had not been committed. The 
forgiven may censure themselves, but their 
Redeemer will no more condemn them. 
Hence, says the poet, 

" Not as mortals do 
The Saviour doth ; lie raiseth from the ground 
The crushed one, and restores from eveiy aa ound 
The self-respect of man. No friend untnie 
Is he, with past offense to make thee sad.'* 



1 78 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

DEADENED, ^i^^^ the prodigd son 
NOT HEALED. « ^^^^^ ^^ himself " he found 

no comfort until he was folded in his father's 
warm embrace. It is even so v/ith every hu- 
man soul when it is once brought by reflec- 
tion to feel the pangs of guilt. No philo- 
sophical theory, no denials of the inspiration 
of the Bible, no sentimental communion with 
nature, no attempt to argue the conscience 
into silence, will extract the sting of guilt 
from a divinely wounded soul. Its pain 
may be deadened by resolute plunges into 
the excitements of pleasure or business — 
deadened^ but not healed. To be healed 
it must be dressed with that precious balm 

which 

" Grows 

In that sole garden where 
Christ's brow dropped blood." 

" The blood cf Jesus Christ, his Son/' 
and that blocd only, ^' cleanseth us from 
all sin." Go then, C, guilty soul, wash in 
that precious blood and be healed of all 
thy pains ! 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 179 

False men cannot win the 

FALSE MEN. 

confidence of society, and are 
not, therefore, the possessors of much moral 
authority. But men who are true to them- 
selves, to their fellow-men, and to God, com- 
mand respect and have great influence. 
Hence Professor Amiel is justified in say- 
ing, ^* Let us be true; this is the highest 
maxim 'of art and life, the secret of elo- 
quence and of virtue and of all moral au- 
thority." Jesus was an example of perfect 
trueness, and no man ever spoke with such 
authority as he. 

JUDGING MEN " J^DGE not of men or 
HASTILY. things at first sight," says an 
old proverb. ^' Judge not according to ap- 
pearance, but judge righteous judgment," is 
the profounder precept of the Master of all 
wisdom. Both the proverb and the precept 
bid one restrain that disposition to sit in that 
Rhadamanthine judgment on the actions of 
others which is an outgrowth of one's excess- 
ive self-esteem. Mary Lamb, the sister of 



i8o Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

the genial author of the Essays of Eiia, gave 
a good reason for not forming hasty, ill- 
considered judgments, when she said to a 
friend who had asked her opinion of a 
particular act, *' As I cannot enter into 
your feelings and views of things, your ways 
not being my ways, why should I tell you 
what I would do in your situation ? I have 
a knack of looking into people's real char- 
acters, and never expecting them to act 
out of it — never expecting them to do as 
I would in the same case." The wisdom 
of Mary Lamb's principle is apparent when 
one reflects that most of men's false judg- 
ments of each other originate in the as- 
sumption that their own view of things is 
the view taken by parties they condemn. 
This is judging according to appearance 
without just consideration of the views and 
motives of the parties concerned. Such 
judgments are forbidden by common sense, 
by charity, and by our Lord's precept. Better 
" judge not " at all, than to judge unright- 
eously. 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. i8i 

A TWO-EDGED ^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^ converse well 
SWORD. ig a valuable gift. Of one so 
gifted Joanna Baillie says, 

** He is so full of pleasant anecdote, 
So rich, so gay, so poignant in his wit, 
Time vanishes before him as he speaks." 

Yet such wit is a two-eged sword. It maybe 
used either for or against truth and goodness. 
If seasoned with the salt of divine grace it 
makes its possessor a social benefactor; if in- 
spired by godlessness it makes him a dispenser 
of poisons. Hence a gifted conversationalist 
does well to heed the counsel of Oliver Gold- 
smith, who says: " Laugh at folly alone — find 
nothing truly ridiculous but villainy and 
vice; " and of Paul, who with still higher wis- 
dom said: '^ Only let your conversation be as 
becometh the Gospel." 

CONDUCT AND ^^ HV is ouc's character what 
CHARACTER. [^ jg p What made it so strong 
or so weak, so exalted or so imperfect ? Dr. 
Dykes says: " It is our own past which has 
made us what we are. We are the children 



1 82 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

of our own deeds. Conduct has created 
character; acts have grown into habits; each 
year has pressed into us a deeper moral 
print; the lives we have led have left us such 
as we are to-day." Let him who questions 
these clear-cut statements take a retrospective 
view of his past life, seeking the roots of his 
present character. He will surely find the 
faults of his past incarnated in the habits of 
his present life. He will see much that now 
mars the beauty of his character to be the 
outcome of past wrong indulgences, past neg- 
lects to improve his opportunities, and past 
acts of unwisdom. Remembering this, let 
him learn to put nothing m.ore into his life 
that will give wrong shape to his character 
next year, but after seeking complete renova- 
tion of his present self at the hand of our 
merciful Lord let him henceforth keep him- 
self pure. 

THE HEAV- " Have we not all eternity 
ENLY REST. £qj. q^j- rcposc ? " asks Ar- 

nauld. To this one must reply, " Yes and 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 183 

no." Yes, if by repose rest from burdensome 
activity, from temptation, from anxiety, from 
the vexations of the present is meant. From 
all these there " remaineth a rest for the peo- 
ple of God." But if by repose Arnauld 
means a stagnant, idle, unemployed life in 
the future, one must say with emphasis Jio^ a 
thousand times no ! Inactivity in heaven 
would make it unendurable. It must be a 
life of action, but of action that will never 
weary, but always refresh. The soul will be 
like a fountain there, finding constantly re- 
newed delight in pouring out its energies in 
the service provided for it by Him who '' him- 
self inactive were no longer blest ! 

THE UNGRATE- The peasant who lives on 
FUL MAN. ti^g banks of the swiftly flow- 
ing Rhone gazes daily on its waters, yet 
never gives even a passing thought to the 
glaciers from whose slowly melting snows they 
are constantly replenished. Is it not even so 
with thee, O, unchristian man ? God's count- 
less mercies lie thick around thee, above thee, 



184 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

at thy feet, yet, like that thoughtless peasant, 
thou never thinkest of his unmeasured love 
from which all those mercies flow. He scat- 
ters the signs of his love for thee every- where, 
yet thou refusest to see his hand, O, un- 
grateful man ] 

THE SACRi- The Church is the body of 
LEGiousMAN. ^^^.^5^, How wickcd, then, 
must that man be who originates or promotes 
a church quarrel ! Sacrilegious man ! He 
wounds the body of his Lord. He divides 
men whom he ought to unite. He inflicts in- 
calculable evils on society, for who can tell 
how deeply a church quarrel unsettles the 
faith of men in the Gospel of Christ ? Writ- 
ing of church division Moore said: 

'* Hearts fell off that ought to twine, 
And man profaned what God had given ; 
Till some were heard to curse the shrine 
Where others knelt to heaven." 

To that man who is involved in this dreadful 
work of shooting burning arrows into the 
body of Christ the prayer of David is emi- 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 185 

nently suited and will be curative if sincerely 
offered. ^' Let not them that wait on thee, O, 
Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake; 
let not those that seek thee be confounded 
for my sake, O God of Israel." 

A FALSE -^^' ^^^ early days of Chris- 

BELiEF. tianity the standard of pub- 
lic morals was so low, the life of general 
society was so gross, that it was less difficult 
for the individual Christian to be ethically 
superior to the world than it is now since the 
Christian religion has raised the standard of 
public morals so much nearer to its own than 
it was then. For the same reason the in- 
dividual Christian of to-day is more easily 
captured by the world. The grossness of 
heathen immorality repelled the primitive be- 
liever; the fair aspect of the world to-day 
deludes the modern disciple into a belief that 
he may innocently mingle with it. O, false 
belief ! The spirit of the modern world is as 
hostile to Christ as was the spirit of the 

heathen world, and no man can love it with- 
13 



i86 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

out breaking faith with Christ and ceasing to 
love the Father. To be of the modem world 
is to part company with the Lord Jesus. 

VEXATIOUS There are days in the lives 
DAYS. Qf lY^QYi when the atmosphere 

of one's place of business resembles the raw 
air of a day on which the east wind is lord 
of the weather. On such days the spirit of 
vexation seems present, irritating one's nerves 
and disturbing the order of affairs, so that 
one goes home at night saying, 

••The fretful stir 
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, 
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart." 

When in this mood the weary-hearted man, 
instead of sitting down to brood over the 
vexations of the day, should imitate his Mas- 
ter, who, when wearied and worn by the 
hardness of men's hearts, was in the habit of 
seeking a retired spot in which to commune 
with his Father. Thus his disciple should 
flee to the refuge of secret prayer, and tell his 
vexations, not to men, but to God. He will 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 187 

thereby rise into the bracing atmosphere of 
spiritual fellowship with the Highest, where 
his vexed feelings will vanish like the mist of 
the night when breathed upon by the morn- 
ing sun. 

The most brilliant and suc- 

AT THE 

GRAVE'S cessful sinner, when he 

MARGIN. , , ... 

reaches the margm ot the 
grave, in summing up the results of his ca- 
reer, finds that he has spent his day in 

''The toil 
Of droppinij buckets into empty wells, 
And growing old in drawing nothing up." 

MERCANTILE ^^^ ^is Liv€s of American 
HONOR. Merchants Mr. Freeman 
Hunt says of that noble merchant prince, 
Amos Lawrence, that "' He was no speculator. 
. . . He had a high sense of mercantile 
honor, and the first condition of speculation 
is that it shall place that honor in imminent 
peril. The truth of this latter assertion finds 
sad demonstrations to-day in the vast number 
of financial speculators whose soiled reputa- 



i88 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

tions and wrecked honor lie along the path 
of commerce like the fragments of wrecked 
ships swept upon the sea-shore by tempest- 
uous gales. God, nature, public good, and 
the moral sense of mankind are at war with 
selfish speculation, and, therefore, sooner 
or later, ruinous retribution overtakes the un- 
principled speculator. Assuredly, mercantile 
honor is more precious than much ill-gotten 
gold. 

A TELLING JoHN BuNYAN made a tell- 
poiNT. ij^g pQii^t in his immortal alle- 

gory when he described poor Christian start- 
ing up from his dungeon floor in Giant De- 
spair's Castle, and exclaiming, " What a fool 
am I to lie in this filthy dungeon when I have 
a key in my bosom that I am persuaded will 
open every lock in Doubting Castle ! " How 
true is this to Christian experience ! The be- 
liever, by falling into temptation, grieves the 
Holy Spirit, loses his faith, sinks into an abyss 
of gloom, grows weary of well-doing, restrains 
prayer, and lives a cheerless, despairing life. 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 189 

But the Good Shepherd seeks him, and with 
secret whispers moves his disheartened, wan- 
dering sheep to penitence and prayer. Sud- 
den gleams of heavenly light follow ; and, 
wondering at his folly in so long neglecting 
to pray, the disciple bows again at the throne 
of grace; and, being freely forgiven, once 
more goes on his way rejoicing. How much 
better it is, however, never to cease praying, 
since prayer is comfort and prayer is power ! 
As the poet sings, 

*' We kneel, and all around us seems to lower ; 

We rise, and all, the distant and the near, 

Stands forth in sunny outlines, brave and clear. 

We kneel ; how weak ! We rise ; how full of power ! 

Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, 

Or others that we are not always strong ; 

That we are ever overborne with care, 

That we should ever weak or heartless be. 

Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer; 

And joy, and strength, and courage are with Thee? " 

GRIEVING THE SoME men SO use their gifts 
CHURCH. as not to edify, but to grieve, 
the Church. They even glory in their offen- 
sive idiosyncrasies and censure those whose 



190 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

tastes are justly wounded by their unwisdom. 
To such persons Paul's statement of God's 
intention respecting the use of gifts for Chris- 
tian work is eminently pertinent. They are 
given, he says, " for the perfecting of the 
saints, ... for the edifying of the body of 
Christ." 

THE TREACH- "^^ ^ long-continucd calm at 
EROUS CALM, g^^ ^Y\Q inexperienced voyager 
is apt to say, " We shall have no more gales 
on this voyage." A similar expectation of 
continuous exemption from temptation and 
trial arises in the heart of a young believer 
when showers of refreshing fall frequently 
and many days of spiritual sunshine succeed 
each other. But the result of such expecta- 
tion is to throw him off his guard, to induce 
unwatchfulness, and to tempt the ever-watch- 
ful devil to assault him with strong and 
unlooked-for temptation. The experienced 
disciple, knowing this, sets a double watch 
over his heart in his hours of spiritual delight, 
praying with the poet, 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 191 

** Whene'er becaimed I lie. 

And storms and wind subside, 
Lord, to my succor fly, 

And keep me near thy side. 
For more the treacherous calm I dread 
Than tempests bursting o'er my head.'* 



THE GIFT AND ^^ thosc sweet seasons of 
ITS GIVER. spiritual refreshing which 
come to individual believers, and at times to 
an entire Church, one is in danger of trusting 
rather in God's blessings than in God himself 
— of depending rather on the refreshing than 
on the Holy Spirit from whom it proceeds. 
The result, if this failure to discriminate be- 
tween the gift and the Giver continues, is to 
the believer what an unnoticed current is to 
a ship. It causes him to drift unconsciously 
away from God, because his faith fails to lay 
hold upon him. To prevent this misfortune 
the believer must be sure to touch the hem of 
the Master's garment — to enter into such con- 
scious fellowship with him as to be able to say 
with St. John, " Truly, our fellowship is with 
the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." 



192 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

EFFECTS OF There* is a State of mind 
SELF-CONCEIT, called self-conceit. When by 
dwelling too much upon his own attainments 
a disciple falls into it, he vainly imagines that 
though all other men should fall into sin he 
would stand firm. Such a man is, alas ! al- 
ready fallen, at least from his humility. 
When he comes to himself after stumbling, 
as he is apt to do, he will sit on the footstool 
of contrition, and, instead of boasting, say, 
*^ Woe is me ! for I am a man in danger of 
falling into almost any sin if God should 
leave me to myself." Then his humble 
prayer will be, '' Hold Thou me up, and I 
shall be safe, and I will have respect unto 
thy statutes continually." 

THE DAY The man who comprehends 

OF GOD. that God made the Sabbath 
for the needed rest of the human body, and 
to give the renewed soul a foretaste of its rest 
in heaven, can say from his heart, " I love 
thee, day of God ! " But he who makes it a 
day of business or sensuous pleasure thwarts 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 193 

the divine aim and turns God's remedy for 
the weariness of the necessary toil of life into 
a source of moral disease. He breaks 

" The loveliest charm 
Of all our toilhig^ days,'* 

and forces that holy day, which was meant 
to bless, to do him harm. 

PAINFUL AP- How natural it is for the 
PREHENSION, aged and comparatively help- 
less to shrink with timid apprehension from 
possible destitution ! This is a cold world, 
and, despite all the warmth and kindness 
the religion of Jesus has breathed into its 
heart, there is not much in it to awaken the 
cheerful trust of helpless age in its charities. 
Hence the aged poor who belong to Christ 
will find their escape from apprehensions of 
distress, not in what the world has to offer, 
but in him who feeds the ravens and clothes 
the grass of the fields. He has helped them. 
He will help them because his care-taking 
love never fails. They may soberly trust him 
because he is their Father who knows their 



194 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

need and is pledged to provide for their wants. 
And this trust is no idle fancy, for, as Whit- 
tier sings, 

*' The steps of faith 

Fall on the seeming void, and find 

The rock beneath." 

MADAME GUY- There is exquisite beauty 
ON'S SECRET, ^j^ Madame Guyon's descrip- 
tion of her feelings at the time she was im- 
mured in a cell within the castle of Vin- 
cennes, charged with teaching dangerous 
doctrines, ^' It sometimes seemed to me," 
she said, ** as if I were a little bird whom the 
Lord had placed in a cage, and that I had 
nothing to do now but to sing. The joy of my 
heart gave a brightness to the objects around 
me. The stones of my prison looked in my 
eyes like rubies. I esteemed them more than 
*all the gaudy brilliances of a vain world. My 
heart was full of that joy which Thou givest 
to all those who love thee in the midst of the 
greatest crosses." Does the reader ask how 
Madame Guyon learned the divine art of 
transmuting her bitter trials and cruel crosses 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 195 

into joyousness ? She herself shall tell him 
in a stanza from a poem written in her gloomy 
cell. She says: 

" Love is my teacher. He can tell 
The wonders that he learnt above ; 

No other master knows so well — 
*Tis love alone can tell o{ Love.''' 

This was her secret. She had learned to love 
Christ because he first loved her. And all 
who will may learn that sweet lesson too, and 
be as glad as she was even when in the fiery 
furnace of manifold adversities. 



PILLARS OR ^^ ^^^ Church some men are 
REEDS. "pillars," as Paul said James, 

Cephas, and John were in the Church at Je- 
rusalem. 

**And some are reeds that one time sway to the 

current, 
And to the wind another." 

These double-minded ones, being weak- 
willed, add nothing to the strength, consist- 
ency, or growth of the Church. They rarely 
succeed in overcoming either themselves or 



196 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

the world. But the former, being '* strong in 
the Lord," are the glory of the Church, and 
are destined to conspicuous honor in the 
world to come. Of such the Christ says, 
*' Him that overcometh will I make a pillar 
in the temple of my God, and he shall go no 
more out forever." Remember, therefore, O, 
fickle disciple, that God does not make the 
*' reeds " of the present life into ** pillars " of 
the eternal temple. 

A PRECIOUS There is an ornament 
ORNAMENT. ^y[^Y^[^ ^hc rcach of Chris- 
tian men and women which is of higher value 
than emeralds, rubies, or diamonds. It is so 
precious that He to whom these gems are but 
as pebbles of the brook esteems it as '* of 
great price." St. Peter calls it " a meek and 
quiet spirit." Not the mean, cringing spirit 
of a slave, but the manly, self-contained spirit 
which suffers injury without a desire to retal- 
iate, and endures provocations to anger with 
serene, silent dignity. Its highest type was 
set before the world when the Lord Jesus 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 197 

stood in Pilate's hall listening to his false ac- 
cusers, to the mocking of the spiteful Jews, 
to the coarse comments of the Roman sol- 
diers, and to the questioning of his judge, 
without uttering an angry word, and wearing 
an air of moral majesty that compelled the 
respect and moved the fears of the man whose 
lips had in them the power of life and death. 
The man who, through his purpose to please 
his Lord, has acquired the habit of holding 
his temper under similar restraint when others 
speak ill of him, insult him, or heap indigni- 
ties upon him, is adorned with this precious 
ornament. He is a meek man. He has so 
deeply communed with Him who said, " I am 
meek and lowly in heart," as to acquire his 
lovable spirit and to ** find rest unto his soul.'* 

THE DissAT- -^ MAN who is habitually 
ISFIEDMAN. dissatisfied with others is 
usually dissatisfied with himself. In its shal- 
low cunning his heart " quarrels with what is 
outside of it," in the vain hope of thereby 
" deafening the clamor within itself," 



198 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

A SEEMING I^' ^he Lord's dying coun- 
PARADOX. g^ig ^Q j^-g (lisciples he bade 
them, '* Watch and pray lest ye enter into 
temptation; " in the Epistle of James we are 
instructed *^to count it all joy when yc fall 
into divers temptations." These two texts 
make a seeming paradox, prompting one to 
ask, ** Why should one pray against a thing 
which when it comes is an occasion of joy ?'* 
The key to this paradox is found when one 
remembers that there are two kinds of temp- 
tations — temptations which are simply tests of 
faith and loyalty, and temjnations to commit 
sin. The former are God's discij^linary in- 
strumentalities designed to strengthen char- 
acter and to increase piety; the latter are the 
offspring of uncrucified lusts, stimulated by 
the devil and tending to one's spiritual ruin. 
The first, heroically endured, result in blessed- 
ness, honor, and a brighter crown; the second, 
entered into — that is, parleyed with and 
yielded to — first deface the beauty of the soul 
and then destroy its hopes of happiness. 
Against these we should watch and pray, 



Faith, Hopk, Love, Duty. * 199 

'' Save us from temptation to do evil I " 
Concerning the foniier our prayer should 
be, ''Grant us the grace of endurance, the 
blessedness and peace of an unconquerable 
patience!" '* Behold," says James, *' we 
count them happy which endure." 

GNAWING That gnawing anxiety which 

ANXIETY. results from constant brood- 
ing over the possible approach of overwhelm- 
ing troubles has been forcibly described as 

" The broad consumptive plague 
Which breathes from the city lo the farthest hut " 

The Christian has a sure ]>rophylactic against 
this wide-spread plague in his Lord's assur- 
ance that his heavenly Father knoweth all his 
needs, and has pledged himself to add all 
necessary earthly things to him who seeks 
first the kingdom of God and his righteous- 
ness. His faith in this promise is proof 
against the poison of anxiety. 

HIDDEN **What a godlike beauty 

BEAUTY. ihoxi hidest ! " exclaimed an 

ancient sculptor, as he gazed in deep thought- 



200 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

fulness on a rude block of marble. The pos- 
sibilities of the shapeless stone, it subjected 
to the strokes of his transforming chisel, were 
clearly outlined in his vivid imagination and 
prompted his enthusiastic exclamation. In 
the Gospel we see Christ looking upon the 
rich young man who refused to follow his 
directions, and loving him, '" Then Jesus, 
beholding him, loved him.'* Why did he love 
him ? Not because of his goodness, or will- 
ingness to be his disciple, which he was in 
the very act of refusing to be, but because of 
the possibilities he saw in his nature would 
he but submit his spirit to the molding fin- 
gers of divine love. And does he not behold 
the same glorious possibilities in thee, O, dis- 
obedient soul? Rude, wicked, self-willed as 
thou art, he sees that his grace can make 
thee beautiful as holiness. Thou hidest 
beneath thy selfishness a godlike beauty 
which he and he only can call into actual 
being. Therefore, beholding thee, he loves 
thee. Obey him, and he will make thee 
godlike; turn from him, and thy sinful 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 201 

nature will increase in moral deformity until 
it will become a , perfect image of the evil 
one. 

A QUICK ^ NATURALLY quick tem- 

TEMPER. pgj.^ jj],^ r^^ indocile horse, 

does not readily submit to its owner's will. 
" It has been said that it is easier to act the 
martyr than to conquer one's temper." 
There may be some exaggeration in this say- 
ing. It is true, however, that to the unas- 
sisted will the conquest of a fiery temper is 
next to impossible. But ** impossible " is an 
unbeliever's adjective. It has no proper place 
in a Christian's vocabulary, inasmuch as to 
him no duty is impossible. He who com- 
mands the duty says to him, ^* My grace is 
sufficient for thee." It is, therefore, his great 
privilege to stand against his self-asserting 
passion like a lion-tamer amidst his subdued 
animals, holding them in abeyance and tri- 
umphantly exclaiming, " I can do all things 
through Christ strengthening me." Thus, 

divinely aided, the believer, though naturally 
14 



202 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

as furious as Jehu, may become as meek as 
Moses. Yea, he may clothe himself, as in a 
beautiful garment, with the meekness of the 
lowly Lord. 

THE LOOK OF Faith has been succinctly 
THE HEART, defined as ^^the look of the 
heart toward Christ crucified," and gratitude 
as *'the memory of the heart." But no man 
can have the gratitude without the faith, ncn* 
the faith without the gratitude; seeing 
that one must ** Behold the man ! " before he 
can be grateful for his great love, and having 
beheld him with loving trust one cannot help 
remembering him forever. Love and grati- 
tude are twin children of faith. 

VIRTUE that Ood's vineyard is no place 
SHINES. f^j. ^i^g supine and idle, but 
only for active, industrious laborers. Taking 
this view of Christian duty, John Milton said, 
" I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered 
virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that 
never sallies out and sees her adversary, but 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 203 

slinks out of the race where that immortal 
garland is to be run for, notwithstanding the 
dust and heat." This is a just remark, see- 
ing that a virtue unexercised, like a lock un- 
used, gathers rust and is spoiled by the vice 
of idleness. Only the active virtue shines. 
Yet it must be remembered that there are 
many arenas in which virtue may find its ad- 
versary and win the garland. For some there 
is the noisy race-course of public life; for 
others the less conspicuous social circle; for 
still others the obscure country school-room 
or the humble and unnoticed cottage home. 
And Christian virtue may meet its foe face to 
face and win the victor's wreath as gloriously 
in the one as in the other. It is not the 
sphere, but the courage and faithfulness of 
the contestant, that secure the prize. A life 
spent before the public may make its actor 
conspicuous among men; but a quiet, com- 
paratively silent life may win as rich a prize 
for the unknown disciple from Him that 
seeth not as men see. Of such a disciple the 
poet says: 



204 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

*' His life grew fragrant with the inner soul ; 
And weary folk who passed him in the street 
Saw Christ's love beam from out the wistful eyes, 
And had new confidence in God and man. 
And so he worked, and longed, and lived, and loved, 
Did noble deeds, not knowing what he did. 
Thought noble thoughts, unconscious of their worth, 
And lived that greatness he desired in vain." 



AN AWFUL Young sinners, when break- 
GiFT. jj^g away from the restraints 

of virtue, often boast of their purpose " to do 
as they please." God, in his desire to exalt 
them to a dignity but little lower than the 
angels, endowed them with that high degree 
of liberty. But it is an awful gift, since it 
gives them the power to rise to godlikeness, 
on the one hand, or to sink themselves into 
the depths of moral shame and misery, on 
the other. Remember, therefore, O, young 
sinner, that in doing as you please, if it 
please you to do wrong, you will find your- 
self in the iron grip of God's eternal law 
which with an irresistible force will lead you 
to the darksome charnel-house of the second 
death. 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 205 

THE IDEAL The ideal home is not, 
HOME. never was, a product of any 

form of paganism or of any false religious 
system. It is the sole product of revealed 
religion. The reason of this undeniable fact 
is found in the lack of power in false religion 
to give birth to those affections which are es- 
sential to happy home life. They are all im- 
potent to conquer that innate selfishness of 
the human heart which, by asserting itself in 
the home circle, breeds mutual indifference, 
self-will, and dissension. The principle of 
self-sacrifice is not in them; and there is no 
tie but that of mutual sacrifice that can bind 
a family into an harmonious whole. But be- 
cause the religion of Jesus does bring a new 
and powerful affection into the heart which 
expels its natural selfishness it furnishes the 
conditions which are necessary to happy 
home life. Hence a poet justly sings: 

•* Sweet is the smile of home, the mutual look 
When hearts are of each other sure ; 

Sweet all the joys that crowd the liousehokl nook, 
The haunt of all affections pure." 



2o6 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

Yes, pure affection, springing as streams from 
the love of Christ and cleansing the heart of 
its selfish passions, are the quiet forces which 
make the Christian household a "fairy ring 
of bliss." And the stronger the heaven-born 
Christ-love in each of its members the 
sweeter, the happier, the more beautiful is 
the life of the Christian home. 



UNDECIDED Among Christian converts 
CONVERTS. some are like Cortez, who, 
after landing his warriors in Mexico, cut off 
the possibility of retreat by burning his ships. 
These converts break off their connection with 
old sins, old haunts, old associations. Others, 
like Lot and his wife, who needed an angel's 
urging to quit the vale of Sodom with suffi- 
cient speed to save their lives, are found 

'* Lingering in heart and with frail sidelong eye, 
Seeking how near they may unharmed remain " 

to their former modes of living. Of these 
two classes many of the latter, like Lot's 
wife, fail to win final salvation, while the 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 207 

former, lured onward by the charms of Heav- 
en's measureless love, grow away from their 
former selves into the likeness of their sinless 
Redeemer. Indecision ruins the one class; 
whole-hearted devotion saves the other. 



AFFRIGHTED WALTER CrANE, in The Si- 

TRUTH. ^^jj^^ Three ^ has this couplet: 

** Truth affrighted fled the market-place 

Where lies were coined in gold, and craft was king." 

Alas ! that this description should be so 
nearly copied from existing facts in many de- 
partments of modern trade and finance as to 
be true to actual life. Yet it is even so; and 
because lies and craft are triumphant over 
truth and fairness universal distrust reigns 
as an avenging Nemesis throughout the land, 
breathing paralysis on business and filling 
men's minds with dismal apprehensions. 
Would our great financial operators expel 
craft and falsehood from the marts of finance, 
and enthrone truth as queen in the courts of 
mammon, business would spontaneously re- 



2o8 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

vive and prosperity smile on the mass of the 
people. The chariot-wheels of trade drive 
heavily when they are in the Red Sea of di- 
vine disapproval. And the woes of disaster 
must follow in their wake unless they are 
brought into harmony with God's laws of 
truth and justice. It is hard for men to kick 
against the goads of heaven. 

SICK UNTO ^^ ^^^^ ^ sinner who is sick 
DEATH. y^[^^ mortal disease that the 
hour of his death is near at hand is usually 
to so excite his fears as to hasten his end. It 
is, therefore, a very common practice to con- 
ceal from such a one the fact that the de- 
stroyer has possession of the citadel of life. 
But when a spiritually-minded man is sick 
unto death there is no need of such conceal- 
ment. The nearness of death, either in mani- 
fest sickness or apparent health, awakens no 
tenor in him, because 

*■ The bliss unspeakable, unseen, 
Is ready, and the veil that lies between 
A gentle sigh may rend, and then display 
The broad, full splendor of an endless day." 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 209 

Happy believer ! Seeing that there is al- 
ways only a step between the life and death 
of every man, how passing strange it is that, 
with the means within his reach of transform- 
ing death from being the king of terrors into 
a friendly conductor to the beautiful land, 
every sinful soul does not flee at once to Him 
whose blood, by cleansing the soul from guilt, 
takes away the sting of death ! 

A MANLY While yet a young man 

UTTERANCE. q£ uncertain prospects John 
Quincy Adams said, '* With an ordinary share 
of common sense, which I hope I enjoy, I can 
live independent and free; and rather than 
live otherwise I would wish to die before the 
time when I shall be left to my own discre- 
tion." This manly utterance was the key- 
note to the remarkable career of Mr. Adams. 
To be free from dependence on the favor of 
individuals and parties, to be independent in 
his judgments and opinions, and to act as his 
conscience dictated, was the height of his 
ambition. He had the courage of this high 



2IO Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

ambition, and therefore he served his genera- 
tion usefully and honorably. Young men in 
these days of place-hunting will do well to 
shrink, as he did, from voluntary dependence 
on the capricious favors of men in power 
and from slavish bondage to the opinions of 
other men. To be loyally free and wisely in- 
dependent gives strength and dignity to 
character. 

SAVING That saving faith in a Jew- 

FAiTH. ig]-^ believer was identical in 

its operation with that of a Christian is strik- 
ingly manifest in this song of David: " The 
Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart 
trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore 
my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song 
will I praise him." Here we have David's 
conception of the divine Being as his strength 
and his shield; then his trust, his conscious 
relief, his consequent joy, and his v/ords of 
praise. The Christian has a wider knowledge 
of God's infinite love seen in the gift of his 
Son as the propitiation, not for a favored na- 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 211 

tion or a select number, but for " the whole 
world." Seeing that such a propitiation must 
include himself, the Christian suppliant 
*' trusts in him and is helped.'* And this is 
saving faith — simply trusting in Christ and 
being helped. The trust and the help are 
inseparable, since whoever can truly say, ^*I 
trusted in him," is sure of the experience ex- 
pressed in the words, ** I am helped." Blessed 
be the God of universal love ! Let the 
shrmking penitent trust him without fear. 

A FAIRY -^^ ^^ P^^^ ^^ Qfodi^ the fam- 

RiNG. j}y jg intended to be the abid- 

ing-place of tender mutual affection. Each 
.member of it is expected to so chasten his 
native selfishness as to contribute to the hap- 
piness of the whole. Where this is done the 
family becomes, as Montgomery describes it, 
" a fairy ring of bliss.'* But when selfishness 
steals the scepter of love, and each seeks his 
own and not the others' good, it becomes 
the dreary abode of strife, the cave of all the 
miseries, in which, perchance, one is ever 



212 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

bitterly saying to another, as King Arthur 
did to one of his unfaithful knights: 

" Thou hast not made my life so sweet to me 
That I thy king should greatly care to live. 
For thou hast spoilt the purpose of my life." 

Is it not a misdemeanor before the court of 
heaven for one member of a household to 
spoil the life of another? Yet that is done 
wherever husband or wife, son or daughter, 
brother or sister, lives in constant selfish dis- 
regard of the other's claims. Nothing but 
love can expel the selfishness which thus 
makes one the spoiler of the other's peace. 
God's recipe for family blessedness is, " Love 
one another." 

PETTY Petty trials arising out of 

TRIALS. ^YiQ selfishness and ill-will of 
persons from whose association one cannot 
escape are causes of constant irritation. 
They sting one's spirit as tall nettles do the 
bare hands of him who wields the sickle. 
They hurt, not because of the severity of 
each trial taken by itself, but because of the 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 213 

repeated infliction of the sting on the same 
wounded spot. It were easier to suffer the 
wound caused by a stunning but passing 
blow than to endure the continuity of those 
teasing nettle-stings. Nevertheless, the dis- 
ciple whose providential lot it is to suffer 
them must not fret himself into combative- 
ness and retaliation, for that will cost him the 
loss of his faith and will dishonor his profes- 
sion. But how is he to endure them pa- 
tiently ? Peter prescribes a specific for such 
cases, saying, " Let them that suffer accord- 
ing to the will of God commit the keeping of 
their souls to him in well-doing, as unto a 
faithful Creator;" and let them also, with 
Paul, be ^'persuaded that he is able to keep 
that which I [they] have committed unto 
him against that day." Such submissive 
trust is a sure antidote to the nettle-stings of 
petty trials. 

PRAISING When Monsieur de Harlay, 

THE DEAD, Archbishop of Paris, died, the 

orator appointed to preach his funeral sermon 



214 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

" only found two embarrassing points — his 
life and his death ! *' And when the unscru- 
pulous orator overcame these embarrassments 
and wrote an oration to every point of which 
the archbishop's life had been a palpable con- 
tradiction, the orator's superiors in office for- 
bade him to deliver it. They recognized a 
fact which every preacher of funeral sermons 
should keep in mind, to wit, that no orator- 
ical flattery over a man's dead body can wipe 
out the bad deeds of his life, neither can it 
blot from the public mind the recollection of 
the wrongs which the departed man had put 
into his life. This fact further suggests that 
he who desires to be justly praised and re- 
membered with respect by the public after he 
dies must put nothing but honorable and 
righteous acts into his life. A good life never 
embarrasses the preacher of a funeral sermon. 

FROM GOD ^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^^'^ P^' 
TO GOD. j.j|-y and to practice all the 

virtues, inasmuch as the love which comes 

from God leads to God. Hence a poet says: 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 215 

" The virtues and all holiest sympathies, 
Preponderating upward, meet in heaven, 
And in God's bosom center." 

This beautiful thought of the poet is founded 
on the still more beautiful words of Jesus: 
^^ The water that I shall give him shall be in 
him a well of water springing up into ever- 
lasting life." The Christ within us leads us 
to aspire after the Christ above us. 

MORAL Moral beauty cannot be 

BEAUTY. py|. Qj^ externally like a coat 
on the body, but, being a dress for the inner 
man, it must come from within into the out- 
v/ard aspect and actions of a man. When 
Moses was filled with the beauty of the Lord 
at the foot of the holy mountain his face 
shone with superhuman glory. And to-day 
those believers whose lives are hid wTth Christ 
in God give outward and even facial expres- 
sion to the beauty of Him whose living tem- 
ples they are. Who has not seen homely feat- 
ures made beautiful through the radiance of 
their inner purity and joy ? Who has not 



2i6 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

known faces which were once distasteful and 
disagreeable through habitual pride, con- 
tempt, hatred, and sensuality, so transformed 
by conversion that they became beautiful in 
their expression of the purity, the love, the 
humility given to their owners by the Spirit 
of life ? If believers lived in constant fellow- 
ship with Him who is the source of all moral 
beauty their countenances would silently 
proclaim them to be children of the Highest. 
But who ever knew a human face made beau- 
tiful by sin ? Envy curls the imperious lip, 
passion kindles a flash of evil in the eyes, ap- 
petite brutalizes the features, pride imparts a 
haughty toss to the brow, but no mode of 
sinning ever gives attraction to a human face. 
No I no ! There is no moral beauty in sin, 
but only in that righteousness which is the 
reflection of the image of our precious Lord. 

OUR HARSH How hard some men are in 

JUDGMENTS, ^i^^ir judgment of others! 

How quick to imagine that liberal actions 

were born of mean motives ! How ready to 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 217 

resent imaginary neglect and to magnify mole- 
hills into mountains, to the prejudice of their 
neighbors ! Goethe, by no means a high- 
toned moralist himself, presents a considera- 
tion fitted to cure this evil disposition when 
he says: 

** If God to man were as severe 
As you and I are when we jar, 

"We both had scanty comfort here, 
But he takes men just as they are.'* 

Yes; God considers that men are dust, have 
many weaknesses, and so deals mercifully 
with them. And men should consider each 
other's infirmities, credit each other with good 
intentions whenever possible, and judge 
others as they themselves like to be judged — 
that is, charitably. Johnson, harsh as he 
sometimes was, said in one of his best mo- 
ments that ** every man probably knows worse 
of himself than he certainly knows of most 
other men." And is it not also true that 
many men, conspicuously known as severe in 
their judgments, would be forced to walk with 

blushes of shame on their cheeks if the 
15 



2i8 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

record of their thoughts, motives, and actions 
were legibly written on the backs of their 
coats ? Surely, self-knowledge, to say noth- 
ing of Christian love, ought to beget that 
charity which thinks no evil, feels kindly, 
speaks gently, and acts courteously toward 
all. 

CALL OF THE " Grow in grace, and in the 
SPIRIT. knowledge of our Lord and 

Saviour Jesus Christ.** Thus speaks the 
Holy Ghost through the lips of an apostle. 
Let the believer reply in the lines of a sim- 
ple poet: 

"Let me then be always growing. 

Never, never, standing still ; 
Listening, learning, better knowing 

Thee and thy most blessed will. 
That the Master's eye may trace ; 

Day by day, my growth in grace." 

A PRAYER The habitual desire of every 
OF FAITH. truly regenerate mind was 

never, perhaps, better expressed than in these 

simple lines: 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 219 

** O, grant that nothing in my soul 
May dwell but Thy pure love alone ! 

O, may thy love possess me whole, 
My joy, my treasure, and my crown ! 

Strange flames far from my heart remove. 
My every act, word, thought, be love." 

Does the reader recoil from the sentiment of 
this prayer ? Then let him suspect, if not the 
genuineness, yet the healthfulness, of his piety. 
Does he shrink from it as unattainable ? Let 
him recollect that the purpose of his Lord's 
death was to present every believer '* before 
the presence of his glory," '*holy, unblamable, 
unreprovable in his sight." Instead, there- 
fore, of recoiling and shrinking, the Christian 
should put the above desire into a prayer of 
faith, nothing doubting that the gifts of the 
Lord's grace will never be less than his disci- 
ples' desires. 



HAUNTED 



Care and sadness haunt 
HOUSES. every human habitation. 
The poor man fancies that they prefer his 
mud walls and thatched roof to the marble 
mansions of the rich. He is mistaken. They 



220 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

build their nests in palaces as much as in hovels. 
Were the poorest man on earth to-day made 
rich as Croesus few moons would rise and set 
before he would be heard saying, at least in 
substance, 

** To my new courts sad thought does still repair, 
And round my gilded roof hangs hovering care." 

ATHEISTIC ^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^^ Strength and 
SOCIALISM. weakness of that modern so- 
cialism which is organizing for war against the 
established order of society that it is a//te- 
istic in its principles. Atheism is its strength 
because it appeals to that depravity in human 
nature which ever tries, however vainly, to be 
convinced that there is no God; it is its 
weakness because in making issue with faith 
it assails a force which is allied to the infinite 
One. And in the approaching battle between 
organized atheistic socialism and Christian 
theism, as represented in and around the 
Christian Church, though the struggle may 
be severe and costly, there can be no doubt 
as to the issue, provided the Church will hold 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 221 

fast to her faith. Faith in the divine Christ 
is invincible, because all power is in the hands 
of him whom it trusts. 

They who openly condemn 

FALSE LIPS. . . 

the sins they practice in se- 
cret are like that politician who, when de- 
claiming against paper money, threw a bank- 
note upon the floor, then, having finished his 
speech, furtively picked it up and slipped it 
into his pocket. This man's act disproved 
his speech. In like manner the practice of 
sin by one who condemns it demonstrates, 
not the rightfulness of sin, but the insincerity, 
the hypocrisy, or the weakness of him whose 
lips censure what his heart loves. 

The influence of a man's 

BEARING 

FRUIT work outlives him. Both 

FOREVER. 

his good and evil deeds bear 
fruit long after he is counted with the dead. 
Take the case of iVbraham for an illustration. 
His wonderful faith still lives as an encour- 
agement to Christian believers, and his sins 



222 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

still furnish an excuse for evil to those who 
seek excuses for their own offenses. This 
continuity of one's influence on earth — and 
who dare aflirm that it will not act everlast- 
ingly? — is a startling fact. Were it vocal it 
would say to each and to all, " Put nothing 
but good deeds into your lives ! " 

THE FAITH- -^^^ ^^^ times in thy church, 
TIMES. o, despondent pastor, like the 

dark December days ? What then ? Why 
should darkness cause thee discouragement ? 
Christ liveth. The Holy Ghost liveth. 
Therefore, as a pastor now in heaven once 
observed, "" The dark days are the faith- 
timesy They call for faith, since, "when we 
can see, it is easy to believe, only there is no 
faith in believing then." Look not, therefore, 
at thy slumbering church, nor at the scoffs of 
wicked men ; but look to the ever-living, ever- 
loving Christ, who even now is waiting to 
pour the light of his countenance upon thy 
people. Let thy faith penetrate the gloom 
around thee and move the gracious Redeemer 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 223 

to flood thy church with Ught ! Are not all 
things possible to him that believeth, and 
therefore to thee, O thou of little faith ? 

RISKING ONE'S ^HE man who willfully re- 
MORALiTY, jects the claims of religion 
puts his morality at risk. Theophylact says: 
** He that will not know God is speedily cor- 
rupted also in his morals." Such a man may 
not become a sensualist in any sense; his 
physical constitution may not incline him to 
sensuality; yet having violated his sense of 
moral obligation by deliberately trampling on 
the righteous demand of God for spiritual 
service, he has nothing within himself to 
hinder the rampant growth of such mental 
immoralities as pride, vanity, falsehood, am- 
bition, and covetousness. Having made self- 
ishness monarch in his soul, he will naturally 
cherish selfish vices unchecked, save by those 
natural affections which, except in the very 
worst of men, modify the effects of self- 
lordship. The extent to which he will in- 
dulge these vices will depend upon his cir- 



2 24 Faith, Hope, Love. Duty. 

cumstances and temptations; but so long as 
he is godless he is their slave, and they will 
surely act the part of a moral Nemesis. Even 
the heathen saw this, one of them observing 
that " there is nothing more common for the 
gods to do than pervert the minds of wickjd 
men.'' Paul taught a similar truth when he 
declared that because the ancients "served 
the creature more than the Creator . . . God 
gave them up unto vile affections.** A heart 
empty of God is a cage open to the entrance 
of every unclean thing. 

HYPOCRITICAL ^HE man who when praying 
PRAYERS. against his besetting sin se- 
cretly desires, as St. Austin confessed he did, 
that God would not hear his petition, is nei- 
ther sincere nor hearty, but hypocritical in 
his prayer. As Jeremy Taylor remarks, " To 
pray against a sin is to have desires contrary 
to it, and that cannot consist with any love 
or kindness to it. We pray against it and 
yet do it; and then pray again and do it 
again; and we desire it, and yet pray against 



. Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 225 

our desires." Alas ! what a self -contradic- 
tory thing is the human heart ! 

A WASTED Spring unimproved is fol- 
LiFE. lowed by a barren autumn. 

It is equally certain that if life's spring-time 
is spent in idleness its later years will be 
darkened by the lowering clouds of useless 
regrets, as the author of The JVeuf Timon 
sadly sings: 

** If spring sows only flowers, small fruit the autumn 

gains ! 
I mark my grave coevals gather round 
Their harvest home, their sheaves for garners bound, 
And I, that planted but the garden, see 
How the blooms fade ! no harvest waits for me ! " 

This picture of a wasted life is gloomy enough, 
yet it is only an unfinished portrait. No 
man when reviewing a wasted life can truth- 
fully say, " No harvest waits for me,'* inas- 
much as in failing to sow good seed in his 
early days he could not help sowing the seeds 
of many evils in his soul. Those bad seeds 
have grown into sinful qualities, and a corre- 
sponding harvest waits for him. Refusing to 



226 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. . 

sow to the Spirit, he was compelled to sow 
to the earthly side of his nature, and there- 
fore stands in the doomed rank of men whose 
destiny is given with startling force in these 
graphic words: "Whatsoever a man soweth, 
that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to 
his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; 
but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the 
Spirit reap life everlasting." Make haste, 
therefore, O youth, in this thy day of golden 
opportunity, to sow to the Spirit ! 

AN INSANE There are people who think 
THEORY. -^ ^Q harm to enter into the 
gates of vice provided one's object is not to 
practice but only to acquire knowledge of 
sin. Surely, none but fools will practice this 
insane theory, since they who do so are like 
idiots who thrust a hand into fire to ascertain 
if the flame will hurt. The truth on this 
question was finely expressed by the wise 
mother of " holy George Herbert," when she 
said, " Ignorance of vice is the best preserva- 
tive of virtue; and every knowledge of wick- 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 227 

edness is as tinder to inflame and kindle sin 
and keep it burning." 

MORAL Bryant, in his Autumn 

LOVELINESS. Woods^ exclaims of an imagi- 
nary life spent in roving and dreaming through 
forests clothed perpetually in their autumnal 

dress, 

** Ah ! 'twere a lot too blest.'* 

He places this blessedness partly in the en- 
joyment of nature and partly in the fact that 
this roaming dreamer is supposed to have left 

" The vain low strife 
That makes men mad — the tug for wealth and power, 
The passions and the cares that wither life, 
And waste its little hour." 

This is very pretty and partly true; but is 
it not open to the charge of sentimentalism .? 
No doubt it is profitable for busy men, on 
occasions, to step aside from the world's mad 
strife and to commune awhile with nature in 
her beautiful moods. But to call a life de- 
voted to roving and dreaming, even in Eden 
itself, "a lot too blest," is false and mislead- 



228 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

ing. Man was not made to dream himself 
into rhapsodies over external beauty, but to 
aspire after Godlikeness, after usefulness, 
after heaven. Hence the true uses of natural 
beauty are to sec in it the type of that moral 
loveliness which, dwelling eternally in the di- 
vine mind, is faintly imaged in the works of 
nature; to find in it a spiritual tonic stimulat- 
ing the heart to desire beauty of character, 
and to aspire after that perfectly beautiful 
building of God, a " house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens." In that ce- 
lestial home men will enjoy scenes of perfect 
concrete beauty blended with the highest in- 
tellectual and spiritual exercises of which the 
soul is capable. To live in such a house 
will be supreme blessedness. 

AN ECSTATIC " Thanks be to God ! thanks 
^^^- be to God ! The moment's 

come, the day is dawning ! " Such was the 
ecstatic cry with which the Lady Margaret 
Ingham, a noble Methodist lady of other days, 
burst the bonds of life and soared away to 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 229 

meet her Lord in the Father's house. A tri- 
umphant death ? Yes, gloriously triumphant; 
but it was preceded by a very holy life. Such 
peculiar ecstasy is not given, however, to 
every whole-hearted disciple in the article of 
death, but only to the few to whose joyous 
faith the Master gives the ecstatic vision of 
heaven as they appror.ch its open gates. The 
greater number of believers die not in tumult- 
uous, but calm, peaceful triumph. And is 
not that sufficient to make death appear, not 
as a foeman, but as God's ministering serv- 
ant ? Seeing that these will taste the ecstasy 
of perfect bliss the moment after death the 
difference between the two modes of dying is 
only one of degrees of enjoyment, and is 
often determined more by the action of the 
mortal disease than by different measures of 
faith. In both cases the Spirit saith, " Blessed 
are the dead who die in the Lord." Hence 
the important question is not, '* Shall I die in 
peace or ecstasy?" but "Am I /im'ng in the 
Lord, and therefore prepared to ^ die in the 
Lord.?"* 



230 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

THE FORGOT- How soon the dead are for- 
TEN DEAD. gotten ! Even of men whose 
names are in the mouth of the world for per- 
haps half a century how little is either 
thought or said a few years after the tomb 
closes over their mortal remains ! With rare 
exceptions their words are speedily forgotten, 
their writings are mostly buried in oblivion, 
and after a century or two little else than 
their names survives. "The world," says 
Haweis, " seems to have little need of the 
best of us when we are gone." But no good 
man need repine at this. His influence may 
be perpetuated in the very world which is 
sure to forget him. His words fitly spoken, 
his example, if Christ-like and beautiful, may 
give direction to lives that may long survive 
him. Take, for illustration, the case of a 
very humble youth who, meeting a still 
younger man who had cast away his faith, 
begged him to return to Christ. The apos- 
tate laughed and jeered at his reprover, who 
closed the conversation by saying with deep 
feeling, " Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 231 

and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy 
youth: . . . but know thou that for all these 
things God will bring thee into judgment." 
They parted, but this word of God remained 
in the young man's heart and led him back 
to the cross. He became a very useful 
preacher of righteousness. His reprover died, 
leaving behind him an unknown and soon 
forgotten name. But his influence lives on 
in the work of the " brand " whom he plucked 
out of the fire. It lives still, and will doubt- 
less live by transmission until the end of 
time. Seeing that every disciple may in like 
manner make his influence immortal, who 
need grieve over the oblivion that awaits his 
name? 

A SATANIC When strong temptation is 
SUGGESTION, fastening upon your excited 
lust of the world, and you are so fascinated 
as to be on the point of doing the evil deed, 
"don't say," O, feeble-minded Christian, 
" don't think it, that, if you sin, the blood of 
Christ can easily wash it out." Put that sa- 



232 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

tanic suggestion away quickly ! It is exceed- 
ingly presumptuous, and if you do sin, and 
God gives thee the grace of repentance again, 
the remembrance of it will paralyze the arm 
of thy faith, 

NO OTHER "Where," asks Leighton, 
** if not in Christ, is the power 
that can bring a sinner to return home, that 
can persuade a heart to God ? " The expe- 
rience of mankind confirms the answer of the 
Holy Spirit to this question. He says, 
'^ There is no other name under heaven . . . 
whereby we must be saved." Therefore, O, 
godless man, unless thou wilt lose thy soul, 

*' With all thy heart, with all thy soul and mind, 
Thou must Him love, and his behests embrace ; 
All other loves, with which the world doth blind 
Weak fancies, and stir up affections base, 
Thou must renounce and utterly displace. 
And give thyself unto him full and free. 
That fully, freely gave himself to thee." 

He who draws near to Christ 

NEAR FIRE. 

abhors himself because the 
light of his Master's purity gives him deeper 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 233 

insight into his own sinfulness and kindles 
a fire in his conscience. Hence ancient tra- 
dition attributed to Christ the saying, ''He 
that is near me is near fire." But it is not to 
the conscience alone that Christ is a fire. 
The undying love that bums in him unceas- 
ingly is felt by the guilty who approach him 
with penitential faith, and kindles in them a 
flame of responsive love. Thus the truth of 
the traditional saying that " he who is near 
Christ is near fire " has a twofold verification 
in Christian experience. Happy, therefore, 
is he whose soul has been twice touched by 
the fire that is in Christ, and who now prays 
unceasingly, 

*• Kindle a flame of sacred love 
On the mean altar of my heart.** 

LOOKING Infancy looks forward and 

BACKWARD, ^^g^ backward. Hence it has 

been said of the old man who retains his 
memory, that 

** The man lives twice who can the gift retain 
Of memory, to enjoy past life again," 
16 



234 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

But such a man's enjoyment depends on the 
character of his past life. If it be black with 
images of wicked deeds his recollections are 
not enjoyments, but torments like unto the 
stings of many scorpions; if it be filled with 
the white deeds of loving service to God and 
humanity his remembrances are like the 
smiles of angels. How important it is, there- 
fore, that men moving amidst the heyday of 
active life should put nothing into their lives 
but deeds which, when reviewed in coming 
years, will not mock at them like demons, 
but will be radiant with the reflected smiles 
of Christ. 

BROKEN Thf. young Christian, who, 

vows. after promising his Lord to 

"go and sin no more," breaks his pledge 
by sinning again, is tempted to s3.y, " Evil 
is too strong for me, and it would be 
folly for me to try again or to renew my 
vows of obedience.'* To such a distressed 
soul the author of T^e Synagogue fitly 
says, 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 235 

'* O, say not so ! thou canst not tell what strength 

Thy God may give thee at the length ; 

Renew thy vows, and if thou keep the last, 

Thy God will pardon all that's past 

Vow whilst thou canst ; while thou canst vow thou 

mayst 
Perhaps perform it when thou thinkest least." 

This is very tender encouragement; yet not 
half so sweet or assuring as Christ's picture 
of the Father embracing the penitent prodi- 
gal, falling on his neck and giving him the 
kiss of peace and love. That kiss awaits 
thee, O, backsliding soul ! Only renew thine 
act of faith, and thou, too, shalt be enfolded 
in God's infinite breast of everlasting love. 

PURSUING When day-dreams of earthly 
DAY-DREAMS, fortune or sensuous delight 
haunt the soul, its approaches to God, 

*' The living fountain of eternal pleasure," 

are so reluctant that it may well reproach it- 
self by saying with old Francis Quarles, 

** How nerveless are my limbs ! how faint and slow! 
I have no wings to fly, nor legs to go." 



236 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

On the contrary, in pursuing the object of its 
day-dreams its movements are like those of 
a bark descending a swiftly flowing river 
when 

** The idle vessel slides that watery way, 
Without the blast or tug of wind or oar ; 
Her slippery keel divides the silver foam 
With ease ; so facile is the way from home." 

This state of mind is dangerous, and must 
result in the wreck of faith, if not overcome. 
It shows that the flesh is re-asserting its 
tendency to resist the Holy Spirit. It gives 
pertinency to the remark of St. Augustine: 
''Wouldst thou that thy flesh obey the 
Spirit ? Then let thy spirit obey God. 
Thou must be governed, that thou mayst 
govern." 

EYE OF Miller, in his Bampton 

GOD'S WORD. Lectures, speaking of the 
varied power of Holy Scriptures, compares 
it to the eye of a portrait uniformly fixed upon 
one, turn which way one will. Keble puts 
this thought into these telling lines: 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 237 

" Eye of God's word I where'er we turn 

Ever upon us ! thy keen gaze 
Can all the depths of sin discern, 

Unravel every bosom's maze." 

Every good man knows this to be true, for 
that searching e\^e, that quickening word, has 
found him unnumbered times, sometimes in 
the tenderest gaze of pity, sometimes in such 
a look of rebuke that his heart has cried out, 

" What word is this ? Whence know'st thou me ? " 

But even then it has been the expression of a 
love anxious to save. Precious word ! How 
graciously it fulfills His promise who says: " I 
will instruct thee and teach thee in the way 
which thou shalt go; I will guide thee w^ith 
mine eye." To neglect it is to suffer incal- 
culable, if not irreparable, loss. 

AN iRREPARA- ^IFE is a joumcy, but it is 
BLEDEED. ^^^ doom of the traveler to 
step only toward his tomb. Back toward his 
cradle he cannot retrace one step. The 
river, *^ ocean -born," may return and "be sea 
once more." The rivulet may restore what 



238 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

it takes from the river and be again "what it 
was before." But no man can be any more 
what he has once been. This beautiful ima- 
gery^ from Calderon, the Spanish poet, suggests 
the weighty thought that when a man parts 
with his innocence he does an irreparable 
deed. He never can be innocent again ! 
Thanks be to our merciful Lord, he may be 
forgiven, but the black act stands in his life 
a blot that will not out. Could men, when 
parleying with temptation, clearly compre- 
hend this undeniable truth, they would surely 
hesitate to do what can never be undone. 
There will doubtless be ecstatic joy among 
the redeemed in heaven, but what glorified 
saint will not sigh as he surveys his past, and 
say, especially of his blackest sins, " O, that 
I had never parted with my innocence ! " 
Happy, therefore, is that man or woman who, 
when fascinated by strong temptation, says, 
" No, I will not stain my life with a deed 
which, even if forgiven, can never be undone 
— which, being done, will not permit me to be 
what I was before." 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 239 

A GARDEN ^ TRULY Christian Church 
OF BEAUTY, jg ^]^g abidiiig-place of peace. 
Love presides over it. Its atmosphere is 
pervaded by a spirit of tender sympathy 
which moves its members to enter into each 
other's joys, sorrows, hopes, and fears. There 
is no strife in it, no contention for church 
offices, no jealousy, no affectation of superi- 
ority because one is richer or socially higher 
than another. Its members are all one in 
• Christ Jesus. Any Church may realize all 
this by faithfully obeying the divine exhorta- 
tion which says to it: ** In love of the breth- 
ren be tenderly affectioned one to another; 
in honor preferring one another " (R. V). A 
tender affection, moving each to take more 
pleasure in honoring another than in being 
himself honored, is a sacred talisman which 
can transform a divided Church into a peace- 
ful, ideal one. A stream of brotherly love 
flowing from the love of Christ in every 
member's heart will make any Church a 
garden of moral beauty, a place of perpetual 
delight. 



240 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

SPIRITUAL What the impression on the 
BEAUTY. yielding wax is to the image 
on the seal the life of a faithful believer is to 
the precepts of the Lord Jesus. What is 
written in them is visible in his tempers and 
actions. Hence he may so yield himself to 
the pressure of that divine seal as to be trans- 
formed by it into such spiritual beauty that 
as it was with Stephen, the protomartyr, 

** Men will behold his angel face 
All radiant with celestial grace." 

This radiance is often visible on the faces of 
dying saints. Why is it not seen more fre- 
quently than it is on the features of living, 
active men ? 

The deeply afflicted man is 
BE patient. ^ -; 

tempted at times to doubt his 
Lord's impartiality, because his troubles are 
so much greater than those of his neighbors. 
If such is thy thought, O, child of sorrow, in- 
stead of judging the ways of thy God, which 
are too deep for thy present comprehension, 
consider, first, that all thou art called to en- 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 241 

dure is not equal to the sum of thy vast de- 
merit, and then remember that if thou hadst 
been left undisturbed in thy sins and to per- 
ish everlastingly the evils of thy condition 
would have been immeasurably greater than 
thy present afflictions, which, though very 
grievous to be borne, are " but for the mo- 
ment," and will, if thou dost not fret beneath 
them, " work out for thee a far more exceed- 
ing and eternal weight of glory " in the grand 
hereafter. Be patient, therefore. Remem- 
' ber that thou art 

" A spirit living 'midst the forms of death, 

Oppressed, but not subdued, by mortal cares ; 
A germ, preparing in the winter's frost 

To rise, and bud, and blossom in the spring ; 
An unfledged eagle by the tempest tossed, 

Unconscious of his future strength of wing ; 
The child of trial, to mortality 

And all its changeful influences given ; 
On the green earth decreed to move and die, 

And yet, by such a fate, prepared for heaven ! " 

CHRIST'S ^s ^^^ sunshine puts out the 

BRIGHTNESS, ^^g jj^ one's grate, so the shin- 
ing of God's love in the heart puts out the 



242 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

light of vicious pleasure, which appears to the 
mind thus lighted as nothing more than the 
blackened wick of an extinguished lamp. In 
like manner even those pleasures deemed in- 
nocent by worldly men fail to attract him, 
because he feasts on celestial and nobler joys. 
Julius C. Hare, using a different figure, says: 
"When night is spread around us the light 
of a candle will seem bright and pleasant; 
but when the day has lit up the heavens and 
the earth it dwindles so as hardly to be 
seen." Therefore it is that the spiritual man' 
sees no brightness in the so-called harmless 
pleasures of worldly minds. What are 
twinkling tapers to him who basks in the 
bright beams of the Sun of Righteousness ? 

A FALSE Who that earnestly prays for 

WHISPER. complete likeness to Christ 
does not sometimes hear a whispered rebuke 
saying, *^What presumptuous pride it is for 
you who have sinned so deeply and treated 
God so meanly to ask him for such a favor ! " 
This whisper sounds like the voice of a be- 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 243 

coming humility. In reality it is the voice of 
Satan speaking as an angel of light. Be not 
ignorant of his cunning devices, O, Christian, 
and remember that " you must aspire high if 
you would know yourself to be nothing; " 
and further, "if you would feel yourself to be 
the worm that you are you must claim your 
privilege of being like God." These para- 
doxes are truths, because they rest on the 
fact that a man is never so humble as when 
he most seeks to obey the divine command 
to be Godlike; and never so proud as when 
he despises and neglects it. 

THE BATTLE- SoME Christians grow rapt- 
GROUND. urous v»'hen speaking of the 
crown, the white robe, and the palm, in which 
the Lord's redeemed ones are arrayed in 
heaven. This rapture is assuredly becoming, 
provided it is accompanied with a present 
affection for the things which are symbolized 
by those figures. If it be, then the enrapt- 
ured man loves the purity of which the white 
robe is the symbol, the self-conquest indi- 



244 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

cated by the crown, and the victory over the 
world implied by the palm. But if these 
things be lacking he will do well to seek the 
purity, the power, the victory, of which those 
images are types, inasmuch as their substance, 
if not secured this side the gate of heaven, 
will not be distributed there. This is the 
battle-ground, that the place of triumph for 
victories won, not there, but here. 

A SACRED Who can measure the moral 
BRIDGE. distance between a godly and 
an ungodly man? Of the latter Inspiration 
says, " God is not in all his thoughts; " but 
it describes the former as exclaiming, '* How 
precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God ! '* 
And while the ungodly man fills his mind 
with images of earthly things to the exclusion 
of all recognition of Him who created them, 
the godly man can say, " I have set the Lord 
always before me." The consequence is 
that while the latter finds God to be his 

*' Matchless Comforter in woe, 
Sweetest Guest the soul can know," 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 245 

the fomier is "without God," and therefore 
^' without hope in the world." The guh" be- 
tween their thought-worlds is therefore very 
wide; but, O, blessed fact! it is not at present 
bridgeless. Between the two lies the cross 
— the astonishing fact that ^' Christ died for 
the ungodly." Haste, therefore, O, ungodly 
man, to that sacred bridge I since after death 
it will not be within thy reach; but between 
thee and the godly there will be instead of 
that bridge a ''great gulf fixed," which nei- 
ther will be able to cross. Flee, then, for thy 
soul's sake, to that bridge of mercy at once ! 

A LiFE-LONG TuE Christian is not a mere 
JOURNEY. excursionist, but a traveler on 
a life-long journey. Yet in times of revival 
many overlook this fact, and, instead of 
starting with a purpose, fixed as thoughtful 
determination can make it, to accept religion 
as a life-work, they attach themselves to the 
Church with a resolution flimsy as a spider's 
web, with such careless calculation of the 
cost that at the first sharp temptation or 



246 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

gilded allurement they fall back into their 
former habits. Such men are excursionists 
who will never reach heaven unless they ear- 
nestly consecrate themselves to a life-long jour- 
ney, the end of which is the gate of the city 
of God — the entrance to the banqueting-room 
in which the guests are feasted on everlasting 
love. 

LUTHER AND COMPARED with Luther, 

ERASMUS. Erasmus was the greater 
scholar, the more highly cultivated and 
courtly man, but in moral dignity and de- 
votion to duty he was vastly inferior to the 
heroic reformer. The gulf which separated 
them is plainly visible in one of Luther's re- 
torts to a sentiment of Erasmus. The latter 
had said, " If Luther's doctrine be true it is, 
nevertheless, so dangerous that it ought to be 
concealed, certainly not discussed in the vul- 
gar tongue and in presence of the multitude." 
To this Luther sternly replied: " I tell you, 
and I pray you to lay it to heart, that to me 
the matter is serious, necessary, and eternal, 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 247 

of such momentous interest that it must be 
asserted and defended at the risk of life itself 
— aye, though the result should be not only 
to plunge the world in conflict, but to bring 
chaos back again and annihilate the universe! " 
These widely diverse sentiments illustrate the 
opposite characters of the two men. In Eras- 
mus we see a man whose spiritual conceptions 
were so dim that he was ready to sacrifice the 
immortal interests of mankind to their pres- 
ent quiet; but in Luther we see a man whose 
vision took in the relations of truth to men's 
everlasting well-being. Hence the former 
was a timid, ignoble time-server; the latter a 
grandly heroic reformer. 

MOUNT ^^ ^ truly spiritual mind 

MY SOUL! ^he (.^ief attraction of the 
heavenly world is not its golden streets, nor 
its river of life, nor its mansions, but its glori- 
fied Lord. " That where I am there ye may 
be also" is, to such a mind, the most pre- 
cious portion of the Master's promise to in- 
stall him in the Father's house. Augustine 



248 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

puts this thought quaintly yet admirably 
when he says: "Christ is the home whither 
we go. He is the way whereby we go. Go 
we by him to him and we shall not go astray. 
Christ as God is the home whither we go; 
Christ as man is the way whereby we go. 
Christ carrieth us on as a leader; carrieth us 
in him as the way; carrieth us up to him as 
our home." Hence the author of The Syna- 
gogue sings: 

' ' Mount, mount, my soul, and climb, or rather fly, 

With all thy force, on high ; 
Thy Saviour rose not only, but ascended. 

And he must be attended 
Both in his conquest and his triumph too. 

His glories strongly woo 
His graces to them, and will not appear 
In their full luster until both be there." 

INFINITE What infinite sweetness 

SWEETNESS, there is in these words of 
God : " In a little wrath I hid my face from 
thee for a moment; but with everlasting kind- 
ness will I have mercy upon thee, saith the 
Lord thy Redeemer." How this rich and 
tender promise makes the heart of a good 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 249 

man leap toward his Saviour ! " But it does 
not make my heart leap,'* says a certain 
reader to himself. It surely does not, dear 
sir, if you belong to a class of men who, 
looking on the spiritual side of their lives, 
say with the proverb, " Well enough needs 
no help." Had you any thing like an ade- 
quate conception of the evil of sin, of your 
own depravity, guilt, helplessness, and expos- 
ure to eternal death, the promise cited above 
would be to you what water is to the perish- 
ing caravan in the desert, what bread is to a 
starving man, what liberty is to a slave, what 
a reprieve is to a criminal on the way to the 
scaffold. But your lack of perception does not 
alter the tremendous facts which environ you. 
As surely as that you see no beauty in this 
promise so surely are you on the way to perdi- 
tion. Pray, therefore, for conviction until this 
promise thrills you to the core of your heart. 



A FOOLISH When the burdens of life 
DISCIPLE. press heavily on an ungodly 

man what can he do but wickedly resent or 
17 



250 Faith, Hope, Love, Dutv. 

doggedly endure them, because they are the 
common lot of mankind ? Not having made 
his peace with God, he cannot find the con- 
solation which comes from trust in the High- 
est. But the man of faith casts his burdens 
upon the Lord, and thereby learns the truth 
of his promise to sustain his afflicted and tried 
followers. It is too true, however, that when 
his faith is weak and staggers beneath very 
weighty burdens he is apt to lose the help 
and comfort which are his right by hugging 
his griefs instead of casting them on his will- 
ing Lord. Then his dejection deepens, his 
heart rebels, and the weakness of unbelief un- 
mans his soul. Foolish disciple ! His Mas- 
ter waits to carry his burden, yet he will not 
surrender it. Would he but open his eyes 
he would see his Lord at his right hand and 
hear him gently asking, "Why dost not thou 
cast thy burden upon me ?'* To such a fool- 
ish disciple Dr. Young says, 

" Resign, and all the load of life 
That moment you remove, 

Its heavy tax, ten thousand cares. 
Devolve on One above !'* 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 251 

The poet is substantially right. Casting 
care on God brings that sweet resignation, 
that devout submission, that heartfelt relief, 
that strength to carry, that joy in tribulation, 
which are implied in the Master's " I will 
sustain thee ! " 

THE APPETITE ^^^ Jo^n Fostcr Overstate 
FOR PRAISE, ^j^g ^^gg when he said that 

" of all the propensities of unrenewed nature 
the appetite for praise needs to be kept under 
the severest castigation?" Without deciding 
whether or not the appetite for praise is the 
most hurtful of our selfish appetites it is suf- 
ficiently clear to a reflecting mind that it is 
very ruinous to character if permitted to grow 
into a master-passion. Praise is the food on 
which vanity grows fat; and when vanity 
reigns over a man there is scarcely a fine 
trait of character which he will not sacrifice 
upon its altar. The appetite for praise 
should, therefore, be kept in strict subjection. 
Beattie in his Minstrel says : 

" Him wlio ne'er listened to the voice of praise 
The silence of neglect can ne'er appall." 






252 Faith, Hope^ Love, Duty. 

Perhaps the man who never listened to praise 
of himself with a gratified ear does not exist, 
probably never will exist; but it is surely the 
duty of every man, every minister, especially, 
to bring his love of praise into such subjec- 
tion that when his performances are treated 
with silent indifference by the public he will 
neither fret himself into a state of discourage- 
ment nor cease to put his best efforts into his 
work. He who can secure the praise of God 
needs not mourn the absence of the praise 
of man. 

DOING A " Patient in tribulation ! ** 

GREAT DEAL. Why ^g paticucc prescribed 
to the sons and daughters of affliction ? Sim- 
ply because nothing takes out the stings of 
affliction like patience, and because there is 
no irritant to the sensibilities so powerful as 
impatience, which is itself a tribulation. To 
an impatient man a tribulation is a red-hot 
iron; to the patient one it is only a weight 
which, though it burdens, does not burn him. 
The Abbe Mennais wisely remarks: " Pa- 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 253 

tience gradually softens the rudest asperities. 
You should suffer nothing to exhaust yours, 
neither irritating language nor provoking vi- 
vacity. Be like the vine whose juice is 
sweeter the stronger the land in which it 
grows." Another writer assures the afflicted 
that ^'when we can do nothing more we can 
bear annoying and vexatious events meekly, 
patiently, prayerfully." That is doing a great 
deal. It is more than taking a city. And 
Nathaniel Cotton sings that 

" To be resigned when ill betide, 
Patient when favors are denied, 

And pleased with favors given, — 
Dear Chloe, this is wisdom's part ; 
This is that incense of the heart 

Whose fragrance smells to heaven." 

AN APPALLING ^^^ ^S^d sinner whose char- 
SPECTACLE. acter has become so fixed as 
to be, to all appearance, unchangeable is an 
appalling spectacle. As he stands on the 
crumbling edge of his waiting grave he is, if 
honest with himself, compelled to say with 
the poet, 



254 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

" Life hath become to me 
An empty theater — its lights extinguished, 
The music silent, and the actors gone ; 
And I alone sit musing on the scenes 
That once have been. I am so old that Death 
Oft plucks me by the cloak to come with him ; 
And some day, like this lamp, shall I fall down. 
And my last spark of life will be extinguished. 
Ah me ! Ah me ! what darkness of despair ! 
So near to death, and yet so far from God ! " 

Truly, there is need for such a one to cry, 
"Ah me ! " But still greater is it needful for 
him, long as his sinful career has lasted, to 
give earnest heed to that pitying voice which 
is saying even to him, *^ Come unto me. . . . 
Whosoever cometh unto me I will in no wise 
cast out." O, precious words ! O, venerable 
man, do not despise them, but even now look 
unto Jesus and be saved before the gloom 
which is gathering about .thee deepens into 
*^ outer darkness ! " 



Mohammedan traditions 

A NECKLACE 

OF BRILL- concerning the grandees of 

lANTS. 

David's imperial court affirm 
that among them was an Ethiopian slave 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 255 

named Loknian, famous for his wise sayings. 
When asked one day how he had gained his 
celebrity in David's court he replied, ^' By 
always speaking the truth, by always keeping 
my word, and by never meddling in matters 
that did not concern me." Lokman is a 
mythical character, but the trio of virtues he 
represented form a necklace of brilliants no 
Christian can afford to be without. ^^He that 
speaketh truth showeth forth righteousness," 
saith He who hateth all lying. And a truth- 
ful man must needs be faithful to his plighted 
word, since a deliberate promise-breaker must 
be untruthful at heart. As to Lokman's 
third virtue Peter says, " Let none of you 
suffer ... as a busy-body in other men's 
matters." But, desirable as these virtues are, 
they constitute only a few of the jewels with 
which the grace of the Lord seeks to adorn 
human character. Paul gives their complete 
enumeration when he says, " The fruit of the 
Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gen- 
tleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temper- 
ance." Lokman's glory pales in the presence 



256 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

of a Christian character made resplendent by 
these divinely given brilliants. 

ARABIAN Arabian wisdom teaches 

WISDOM. tj^at " a weight which is noth- 
ing to a camel will crush the camel's foal." 
But God's wisdom assures us that he can 
make the foal's strength equal to that of its 
mother, as he does when he so strengthens a 
babe in Christ as to make him able to endure 
a temptation weighty enough to crush even a 
man in Christ if left without that divine gift 
of strength. Be of good cheer, therefore, O, 
tempted little one ! Thou, even thou^ canst 
do all things through Christ strengthening 
thee ! 

HE IS PRAY- What is the strength of the 
ING FOR ME. beautiful but fragile butterfly 
to the might of the storm and the beating of 
tempest-driven rain-drops ? The pretty painted 
creature is an incarnation of weakness. Yet 
it often lives through a tempest which tears 
the proud oak from the soil and covers vast 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 257 

acres with overwhelming floods. But how 
does it survive ? Simply by seeking shelter 
beneath a broad, protecting leaf. There it 
finds a hiding-place and lives. Let it teach 
the weak, much-tried believer a lesson ! Is 
the storm, sweeping across his life, too much 
for his feeble strength ? Then, like the feeble 
butterfly, let him seek shelter, not beneath 
some shivering leaf of earthly growth, but in 
the love of the Almighty Christ, in whom is 
" everlasting strength," pledged to his protec- 
tion. Let him think that, as Christ prayed 
for Peter, so now, as Intercessor for all his 
little ones, he prays for him. Let him say to 
himself, '^ I am on Christ's breastplate. If I 
could hear Christ praying for me in the next 
room I would not fear a million foes. Yet 
the distance makes no difference. He is 
praying for me ! " 

Some people are constitu- 

OUT OF TUNE. ^ ^ 

tionally inclined to melan- 
choly. They take a morbid view of every 
thing which touches their lives. If they see 



258 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

a slight flaw in a diamond otherwise beauti- 
ful they have no eye for its beauty, but only 
for its defect. Such natures are to be pitied. 
It is very difficult to make them into either 
happy or useful Christians. Old Thomas 
Watson says of them: " Lute-strings, when 
they are wet, will not sound; when the spirit 
is sad and melancholy a Christian is out of 
tune for spiritual actions." This is true. 
Melancholy Christians are like men who wear 
blue spectacles, which cause all things to wear 
a dark tint. Even the Saviour does not ap- 
pear to such souls as he really is. His loveli- 
ness and his readiness to save are but partially 
seen by their gloomy vision. In looking at 
themselves they are also at fault, by viewing 
themselves apart from the grace by which we 
are saved. And by this disposition " they 
tempt the devil to tempt them " to despair 
and to other sins. But even to them Jesus says, 
^* My grace is sufficient for thee." Would 
such persons resolutely cultivate a habit of 
searching for the bright side of things, look 
steadfastly away from self to Jesus, and pray 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 259 

in faith for victory, they would conquer glori- 
ously. Nature is strong, but grace is stronger. 

WORTH RE- There is a thought worth 
MEMBERiNG. remembering in the last line 
of the following stanza by J. R. Lowell: 

" Life is a leaf of paper white, 

Whereon each one of us may write 

His word or two, and then comes night ; 

Though thou have time 

But for a line, be that sublime ; 

Not failure, but low aim, is crime." 

Doubtless low aim — that is, any aim less than 
righteousness, truth, and love as the end of 
living — is a crime; but is it true \k\2x failin-e 
is never a crime ? May not men aim aright 
in thoughtful moments, and yet fail to achieve 
because of vacillation of purpose and double- 
mindedness ? In such cases goodness is as 
"a morning cloud and the early dew," and 
the failure to make it habitual and permanent 
is a crime. But vrhere failure means only 
falling short of the full attainment of one's 
loftiest ideal through uncontrollable weak- 
nesses of mind it is not a crime, but only an 



26o Faith, Hope, Love, Duty 

imperfection which our kind Father pardons, 
because *^ he knows our frame and remembers 
that we are but dust," and because the blood 
of Jesus cleanseth us therefrom. 

POWER OF SIM- ^ RECENT writer in Black- 
PLE WORDS. ^^,^^^ (.^Ug attention to the 

power of simple words as vehicles for giving 
strong and clear expression to the grandest 
thoughts. He finds peculiar and abundant 
evidence of this power in Holy Scripture, and 
selects, as illustrating it, Paul's grand utter- 
ance respecting our Lord's self-humiliation: 
** Who being in the form of God thought it 
not robbery to be equal with God; but made 
himself of no reputation, and took upon him 
the form of a servant, and was made in the 
likeness of men; and being found in fashion 
as a man, he humbled himself, and became 
obedient unto death, even the death of the 
cross." In this rhetorically perfect anticli- 
max, descending by regular steps from Deity 
to the ignominy of death on the cross, we 
find sublime thought clearly stated in mono- 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 261 

syllables and dissyllables, with only three ex- 
ceptions. Following it is the still grander 
conception in the form of a perfect climax, 
and in still more common words: '^ Where- 
fore God also hath highly exalted him, and 
given him a name which is above every name: 
that at the name of Jesus every knee should 
bow, of things in heav^en, and things in earth, 
and things under the earth; and that every 
tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is 
Lord, to the glory of God the Father." The 
study of these remarkable examples of the 
power of short, common words to give per- 
fect rhetorical expression to the loftiest ideas 
is commended to those writers and speakers 
who imagine that big words are the only 
proper clothing for big thoughts. 

DEVOTION AND There may be devotion 
GOODNESS. without goodncss, but there 
cannot be real goodness without devotion. 
Pascal wisely says: "Experience makes us 
see a wonderful difference between devotion 
and goodness." Happy, therefore, is he who 



262 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty 

both prayeth much and liveth righteously — 
whose devotion is a stream giving nourish- 
ment to every Christian virtue, especially to 
love, seeing that, as Coleridge wrote, 

"He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things, both great and small ; 

For the dear God who loveth us, 
He made and loveth all." 

That was a subHme mo- 

LIFE'S 

SUBLIMEST ment in the history of the uni- 

MOMENT. , ^ . -J UT 

verse when God said, Let 
there be light ! and there was light. ' ' Still lof- 
tier was the subhmity of that moment in the life 
of the palsied sinner when Jesus said to him, 
" Thy sins be forgiven thee ! " and there in- 
stantly fell from his anxious breast the heavy 
burden of his many sins. Surely, the moral sub- 
limity of this latter word of Christ exceeds the 
physical sublimity of the former ! Yet how 
insensible men are when to-day Christ repeats 
these gracious words to penitent sinners, and 
in a moment " mountains of sin and heaps 
of anguish" roll off their' hearts, and a light, 
brighter than that of creation's morning, flows 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 263 

from the face of God into their pardoned 
souls ! 

MARVELOUS ^HE beauty of a child-like 
LOVE. faith has rarely found a more 

sublime expression than was given to it by an 
untutored negro when the missionary said to 
him, " How wonderful that the great God 
should condescend to become a man 1 '* The 
negro instantly replied, " Not at all wonder- 
ful; it was only like him." Such a reply 
could not have come except from one whose 
eye of faith had looked intently into God's 
heart of love. The same penetrative faith 
was more elegantly, but not more sublimely, 
expressed by a dying young scholar when 
told that a cultivated Unitarian had said that 
it was not to be even imagined that an Al- 
mighty God should become a man and die 
for such creeping worms as men. The dying 
young scholar, speaking with the ardor of an 
intense affection, replied, " Real greatness 
does not consider it degradation to stoop — 
it condescends to the meanest; and the 



264 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

loftier our conceptions of Godhead the readier 
shall we be to believe that he did that won- 
drous thing — take upon him the form of a 
servant and become obedient unto death." 
Yes, it was indeed a wondrous thing to do; 
but a loving heart can readily believe that it 
was done, because it comprehends that love 
can ^^go out of itself and live in and for 
another." And He who loves men with infi- 
nite affection did that when he took upon 
himself our nature and died for us. O, mar- 
velous love ! 

A PRECIOUS The tear-drop which falls 
TEAR-DROP, from a sinner's eye when the 
Holy Spirit is moving a great congregation 
is more precious than the costliest gems in a 
kingly crown. It is the effect of that soften- 
ing of the heart which is caused by showers 
of blessing falling from the clouds of heaven's 
love. Happy are they who bid those showers 
welcome, and, yielding to their influence, per- 
mit the Saviour to stamp his image on their 
hearts. But woe to him who brushes that 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 265 

tear away and rushes into the pleasures ot 
ungodly men, thereby hardening his heart 
anew until it becomes as unimpressible as 
dried clay to further divine influences. By 
this step often repeated a man's character 
becomes so fixed, his heart so self -hardened, 
that his renewal becomes impossible. He is 
irretrievably lost. Even Shakespeare saw 
this fearful truth when he wrote, 

'* When we in our viciousness 

Grow hard, the wise gods seal our eyes, 

In our own slisne drop our clear judgments, 

Make us adore our errors, and thus 

We strut to our destruction ! " 

STEPPING There is no mortal man so 
INTO LIGHT, brave or so good as to be 
superior at all times to fears of evils too 
strong for his strength to overcome. To the 
ungodly these fears are as imps gifted with 
power to torment him. But godly souls 
appeal to God for help, as David did when 
he said, " What time I am afraid I will trust 
in thee." Before that trust their fears 

vanish. 
18 



266 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

" Those fears, 
Feeling but once the fires of nobler thoughts. 
Fly like the shapes of clouds we form, to nothing." 

Happy, therefore, is he who can step out of 
a mental atmosphere made dark by the deep 
shadows of possible evils into the light of 
his heavenly Father's protecting presence ! 

VAGRANT What believer is ignorant 
THOUGHTS, of ^^e tendency of his 
thoughts to vagrancy during his attempts at 
secret prayer ? Like veritable tramps they 
will sometimes wander from the divine to the 
earthly. John Bunyan describes this trial, 
so common to Christians, in homely phrase, 
exclaiming, "O, the starting-holes that the 
heart has in time of prayer ! None knows 
how many by-ways the heart hath, and back 
lanes, to slip away from the presence of God. 
How much pride, also, if enabled with ex- 
pressions. How much hypocrisy, if before 
others. And how little conscience is there 
made of prayer between God and the soul in 
secret, unless the Spirit of supplication be 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 267 

there to help." This paragraph graphically 
describes the evil, and also names its anti- 
dote, which is, to cite a phrase of Jesus, 
^^ praying to the Holy Ghost," who always 
stands ready to beget spiritual desires so 
strong as to expel all lower thoughts, and so 
to help human infirmities with his own inter- 
cessions as to make prayer both absorbing 
and successful. Pray, then, O, distracted 
soul, ''in the Holy Ghost ! " 

A PRECEPT Paul taught a precept, 
RARELY KEPT, rarely kept by many of our 
Lord's disciples, when he said, " Let all bit- 
terness and wrath and anger and clamor and 
evil-speaking be put away from you, with all 
malice. ' ' The saintly Henry Longden tells us, 
in his diary, how he was enabled to keep it. 
Said he, "I was unjustly treated to-day, and 
was instantly tempted to anger. I cried 
* Lord, help me ! ' and found an inward calm 
and self-possession, by which I had the ad- 
vantage of my adversary." That " Lord, help 
me," was the channel through which the 



268 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

grace of the Saviour flowed instantly into his 
hidden heart and made it a fountain of ten- 
derness instead of a puddle of passion, as 
but for that grace it would have been. If 
every man naturally given to anger would 
habitually insert a " Lord, help me " between 
the offense given him and his reply to the 
offender, he, too, would find the grace of 
self-control, sweetness, and kindness spring- 
ing up within him as a refreshmg fountain of 
spiritual and eternal life. Surely Heaven's 
grace is stronger than man's anger ! 

A PRICELESS Bailey makes the Festus of 
POSSESSION, j^^g poem say of human life 
that it is 

" A bright wheel which burns itself away, 
Benighting even night with its grim limbs, 
When it hath done and fainted into darkness." 

This is not a Christian's but a materialist's 
view of life. It is what life would be if man 
had no soul, no hope of blissful immortality. 
But a life that is blessed with loving faith 
in God, and cheered by the light of a hope 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 269 

divinely begotten, is not like the fire-wheel 
burning itself into darkness. Rather is it a 
priceless possession, 

"A thing to be beloved 
And honored holily, and bravely borne," 

until it terminates in spiritual glory and inde- 
scribable bliss in the mansions of the eternal 
God. Thank God for life ! It is worth liv- 
ing. 

A LENS of ice may be used 

PROFITABLE -^ 

YET UNPROF- to ignite gunpowder without 

ITABLE 

being much melted by the 
rays which it transmits. And there are some 
teachers of revealed truth who can move their 
hearers without being themselves made obe- 
dient to the words they teach. Profitable to 
others, they are themselves unprofited. Alas 
for such ! In spite of their wonderful works 
they are in danger of hearing the Searcher of 
hearts say to them, " I never knew you." 
Happy, therefore, is that teacher of the truth 
to whom the truth is meat, drink, joy, purity, 
and eternal life ! 



270 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

EATING ONE'S " ^^'^ ^^^ ^^^ heart,'' was 
OWN HEART. ^^6 dark saying of a Greek 
philosopher; upon which Lord Bacon re- 
marks that " those who lack friends to open 
themselves unto are cannibals of their own 
hearts." Bacon mentions two French mon- 
archs who were their own tormenters because 
they were so close they would have no friends 
to whom to communicate their thoughts. 
They thus robbed themselves of that friend- 
ship which, as Bacon also remarks, " redoub- 
leth joys and cutteth griefs in halves. For 
there is no man that imparteth his joys to his 
friend but he joyeth the more; and no man 
that imparteth his griefs to his friend but he 
grieveth less." This is doubtless true of 
common joys and griefs; but it is especially 
true of spiritual joy and sorrow. Hence no 
Christian can afford to dispense with a spirit- 
ual friend. The impulse of the divine life 
in the human soul is in the direction of com- 
munication. To rein in this impulse is to 
choke the life. To give it free play by suit- 
able expression intensifies the heavenly life. 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 271 

glorifies God, and diffuses the sacred joy. 
Hence he who is reticent by nature and habit 
needs to so discipline himself as to cultivate 
spiritual friendships and give vent to his 
emotion. And he to whom communication 
is natural should be thankful that the fellow- 
ship of saints is both a privilege and a duty, 
*' if we walk in the light." 

ONE-EYED ^ PREACHER of the olden 

CHRISTIANS, time, speaking of men to 
whom the Master's descriptive phrase, ^* If 
thine eye be single," is applicable, remarked 
with deep feeling, " I love those one-eyed 
Christians/' And may it not be truthfully 
said that none but such Christians are com- 
placently loved either by the Master or others ? 
The single-eyed man is governed by the 
spirit of charity; his opposite, the man 
'* whose eye is evil," is envious of others and 
covetous of gain. The former walks in the 
light of love; the latter in the gloom of his 
own selfish deeds. Can any man say of the 
latter what the ancient preacher did of the 



272 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

former ? Can he affirm, " I love those men 
who have an evil eye ? " Impossible ! for 
such souls repel complacent affection. 

MALIGNANT BACKBITING is Called by 

INSANITY. j)^ Moore a "malignant sort 
of insanity/* In some neighborhoods it often 
takes on an epidemic character. The same 
doctor illustrates this latter feature with the 
fact that in a certain nunnery a sister one day 
bit her companions. The other nuns were 
at once seized with the same disposition to 
bite. The mania spread from cloister to 
cloister^ until, says Cardou, it infected every 
nunnery in Europe, A strange mania, surely! 
But is it not yet more strange and pitiful that 
multitudes of men and women who are in the 
main friendly toward each other should be 
possessed by a mania which leads them to 
habitually bite each other's reputation? It 
is, indeed, a pity that it is so. Yet if every 
Christian would steadfastly resolve *' to speak 
evil of no man " this latter mania would 
speedily die out from the Church of God. 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 273 

THE FAMOUS ^ PROUD man will cheer- 
STONE. fully render services to a 

king which he would scorn to perform for an 
equal. In the latter case he would esteem 
them menial, if not degrading. But associ- 
ated with majesty, done for the sake of a 
royal master, he counts them honorable and 
elevating. George Herbert applies this prin- 
ciple to spiritual things, and in his quaint 
manner calls " for Thy sake " — that is, doing 
inferior duties cheerfully for the Master's 
sake — Christ's " tincture '* for making hum- 
ble things " bright and clean/' Pursuing this 
thought, he sings: 

*' A servant, with this clause. 

Makes drudgery divine, 
Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws. 

Makes that, and the action, fine. 

•* This is the famoas stone 

That turneth all to gold ; 
For that which God doth touch and own 

Cannot for less be told." 

Let that Christian who has duties which 
are disagreeable to his taste, or otherwise 
annoying to his feelings — and few lives are 



274 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

exempt from such duties — try the effect of do- 
ing such acts faithfully for his Master's sake. 
*^ I suffered this for your sake," is the voice 
which falls from the parched lips of the Cru- 
cified One. Let his redeemed follower re- 
spond, " And I will do my hard, mean, dis- 
agreeable duties for thy sake, O, my Saviour! " 
Thus associated with Jesus, the drudgery of 
life will appear mean no longer, but will be 
clothed with the beauty which belongs to acts 
ennobled by being made the fruit of a pure 
and lofty affection. 



One can hardly imagine a 

CONTEMPTU- ^ ^ ° 

ous DisPLEAS- phrase more expressive of con- 

URE 

temptuous displeasure than 
the words of the Lord to the lukewarm 
Laodiceans: ^' I will spew thee out of my 
mouth.'* The neglect of his service by the 
necessarily ignorant God can regard with 
pitiful tolerance; but the indifference of souls 
to whom he has made known his matchless 
mercy disgusts him. He turns from them 
with aversion. "A cold, dead heathen/' re- 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 275 

marks Dr. Bates, " is less offensive and odious 
to him than a lukevrarm Christian." 



THE LIGHT OF ^^HEN the keeper of a light- 
PURE DEEDS, house trims and Ughts his 
lamps he goes to his lonely couch cheered 
by the thought that by his fidelity to his trust 
he will guide many a mariner through the 
dangers of the treacherous sea. But how 
many are thus guided he knows not. It is 
even so with the good man who keeps his 
spiritual light shining through the lamp of a 
virtuous life. That he does guide some souls 
to the truth he cannot doubt; but how many 
are led to think better thoughts, to form higher 
purposes, to enlist under his Lord's banner, 
he cannot know. He never will know until, 
in the blessed hereafter, one and another 
happy saint will say to him, **Your light 
guided me to our precious Christ." Shine on, 
therefore, O, believer ! Trim anew the lamp 
of thy love to the Christ, and let it shine 
through thy pure deeds as the rays from a com- 
mon lamp shine through a globe of alabaster. 



276 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

MORE GOD- Purity is essential to fruit- 
LIKENESS. fulness. Hence the disciple 
who values his relation to Christ as the most 
precious jewel in his possession should not 
despise, but cherish, those desires for more 
Godlikeness which often arise as from an in- 
ward inspiration. When they swell his heart 
he should recognize the fact that they are 
wrought in him by the Holy Spirit, who is 
thereby seeking to purge him, that he may 
** bring forth more fruit." By neglecting 
them, he tempts his divine Purifier to resort 
to the pruning-knife of sharp affliction. By 
persisting in such neglect he makes himself 
the unfruitful branch which is '^ cast forth " to 
wither and to be "burned." 

A FECUND Selfishness, like the aphis, 
VICE. jg wonderfully fecund. It 

breeds other vices with amazing rapidity. In 
the end it defeats its own aim by making its 
possessor so hateful that the men without 
whose aid he cannot rise turn against him. 
Hence he resembles the man who set his 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 277 

house on fire that he might roast his eggs. 
"Loving himself without a rival," he is sure 
to be unfortunate, and to justify the remark 
of that philosopher who said of such, " Whereas 
they have all this time sacrificed to them- 
selves, they become in the end sacrifices to 
the inconstancy of fortune whose wings they 
thought, by their self-wisdom, to have pin- 
ioned." 

WHAT A MAN *' WiLT thou know a man, 
^^- above all mankind, by string- 

ing together bead-rolls of what thou nam- 
est facts?" demands Carlyle. Replying to 
his own query, he says: "The man is the 
spirit he worked in; not what he did, but 
what he became." There is an air of wisdom 
in these words which ceases to impress one 
when one reflects that it is only by knowing 
what a man did that one can know what he 
became. A wiser than Carlyle said of a pre- 
tentious class of men: "Ye shall know them 
by their fruits [the * facts * of their lives]. 
Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of 



278 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

thistles?" A man is just what the facts 
which make up his Hfe really are ; no more, 
no less. 

A TANGLING Why is it that a man whose 
VEIL. deep spirituality was formerly 

an overflowing fountain, and whose zeal was 
a steadfast flame, is now silent in the prayer- 
meeting and indifferent to all church work ? 
Keble answers this question by exclaiming, 

" Alas ! the world he loves 
Too close around his heart her tangling veil hath 
flung." 

A DREADED When a disciple of Christ is 
SCOURGE. conscious of a mental recoil 
from his Lord's "Be ye therefore perfect," 
he needs to search his heart for that unholy 
affection which is, most assuredly, the source 
of his recoil. The late Bishop Wilberforce 
when in this state of mind wrote in his diary, 
" I shrink despicably from the severe counte- 
nance of perfect devotion to God. Lord, 
have pity on my miserable weakness; and yet 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 279 

while I so pray I am scarce sincere, for I fear 
being scourged into devotedness. Lord, give 
me a will for thee. I wish earnestly that I 
more wished to be as a flame of fire in thy 
service, passionless for earth, and impassioned 
for thee." The "scourge" feared by this 
good man came and gave him a wound which 
neither time nor grace ever fully healed. It 
was the death of his wife, whom he loved 
with a love never perhaps surpassed by mor- 
tal man. And it accomplished the end he 
sought in his prayer, in that it made his sub- 
sequent career, as he had prayed, passionless 
for earth and impassioned for God and the 
Church. How human was this experience ! 
How like this good bishop too many shrink 
from perfect devotion to God ! O, foolish 
shrinking ! What is such devotion but 
likeness to Him who is *^the altogether 
lovely?" 

A VAIN MAN'S Praise is swcet music in the 
MUSIC. g^j.g q£ ^ yg^jj^ man, but it 

lures him away from Christ by puffing up his 



28o Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

heart with self-conceit and pride, which God 
hateth. Hence no man who is bent on being, 
above all things, spiritually-minded will list- 
en to praise of his own works, but will repel 
it, as John Knox, the sturdy Scottish Re- 
former, did when on his death-bed. " Praise 
God for what good you have done ! " said a 
lady who came to visit him in that hour of 
pain and weakness. She was about to say 
more in commendation of his grand career; 
but he interrupted her by saying, *' Tongue, 
tongue, lady; flesh of itself is overproud and 
needs no means to esteem itself," He then ex- 
horted her to lay aside pride and to be clothed 
with humility. There was more fidelity than 
courtesy in these words of the uncompromis- 
ing Scotsman, but was he not right in refus- 
ing to permit the incense of praise to be 
offered to his vanity ? But if he did right in 
refusing such incense on his dying bed is 
not that man wrong who in the prime of his 
strength seeks it as a savory offering to his 
pride or his vanity? "Happy is he whose 
praise is not of men, but of God." 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 281 

THE SWEET- David siiigs of God as his 
EST WORD. j-Q(.]^^ j^jg fortress, his deliv- 
erer, his high tower, his shield, and his ref- 
uge. These emblems of what God was to his 
soul were very full of comfort to him, as they 
are, also, to the Christian. But the royal 
poet did not, could not, indeed, see in God 
that fatherly tenderness and that unfathom- 
able love which is manifested in the gift of 
his Son and in the self-sacrifice of Jesus for 
humanity. Hence the Christian, after ap- 
propriating to himself all David's emblems, 
can still say with an ancient Christian poet, 

** Never was sung a sweeter word. 
Nor fuller music e'er was heard, 
Nor deeper aught the heart hath stirred. 
Than Jesus, Son of God ! " 

BY-PATH Bunyan's pilgrims, rejoic- 

MEADOW. jj^g |-Q f^^^ more pleasant 

walking in *^ By-path Meadow " than in the 
great highway to the celestial city, are em- 
blems of those professors of Christ who, hav- 
ing departed from their strict adhesion to 
19 



282 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

gospel ethics, say, "We are very glad we can 
be good men with less of painful self-denial 
and fewer sacrifices of opportunities to ac- 
quire wealth and to enjoy the world than we 
once thought indispensable to Christian disci- 
pleship." But as those pilgrims were awak- 
ened from their delusion by finding them- 
selves in the clutches of Giant Despair, so 
will these self-deluded professors be startled 
by discovering that in eliminating self-denials 
and self-sacrifices from their lives they also 
bade adieu to that faith which works by love 
and purifies the heart. Unhappy souls ! In 
crossing the threshold of the House of Duty 
they turned their backs on Him who sacri- 
ficed himself on the cross to save them. 

WITHIN THE ^^^ George Bell, after a 
GATES. severe and painful struggle, 

succeeded in gaining recognition as a skillful 
surgeon in London. The joyous exultation 
of success won against difficulties which once 
seemed insuperable led him, in writing to a 
famxiliar friend, to say: "My dear George, I 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. zS 



3 



have taken a great deal of money to-day. It 
is literally lying in heaps. . . , This has been 
a day of business, and now we live merrily, 
merrily." Who can fail to sympathize with 
this rising man's exultation, notwithstanding 
its apparent lack of moral elevation, attrib- 
utable, no doubt, to the fact that just before 
his life had been a battle for bread ? May it 
not be accepted, however, as symbolical, in 
some faint degree, of the joy of friends de- 
parted on finding themselves safe within the 
gates of the heavenly Jerusalem ? Standing 
amid the ineffable glory which gleams from 
the throne of the Lamb, conscious that the 
toilsome march of the earthly life is ended, 
that its perilous battles with temptations have 
all been fought, that the last spot of fleshly de- 
filement has been washed away, that the 
period of cares, fears, dangers, and anxieties 
has forever closed, and that their future peace, 
purity, rest, and happiness are all insured be- 
yond risk or possibility of loss, their joy must 
be ecstatic, ravishing, perfect. John tells us 
that when he saw them in his wondrous vis- 



284 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

ion he also " heard a great voice of much 
people in heaven saying, i\lleluia, salvation, 
and glory, and honor, and power unto the 
Lord our God." Who that has friends in 
that exulting throng can indulge in complain- 
ing grief over their departure ? And who 
that has faith in Him who reigns over that 
kingdom can shrink from the coming of his 
messenger, death, to conduct him thither ? 
The self-seeking man whose life consists 
wholly in the things now in his possession 
has fearful need to shiver at the voice of 
what to him is indeed a monster of terror ; 
but the Christian disciple should hail him as 
a friend sent by his loving Master to conduct 
him to the gates of the celestial city. To 
him, as with Paul, to live is Christ, but to die 
is gain. 

When one is tempted to re- 

CLEAN LIPS. ^ 

late a witty but impure anec- 
dote for the amusement of his intimate 
friends let him extinguish the desire he feels 
to amuse his friends in that way with this 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 285 

prohibition of the Holy Spirit, ^'Let no cor- 
rupt communication proceed out of thy 
mouth ! " Lips that speak to God in prayer, 
and of God to men, should never be defiled 
by giving passage to unclean words. 

SATAN'S EM- WiSHES which Spring from 
BASSADORS. discouteut with one's lot in 
life are Satan's embassadors seeking to excite 
one to rebellion against God. They should 
be taken as soon as discovered, slain, and 
offered in sacrifice on the altar of prayer. 
If parleyed with they will be sure to lead one 
into captivity, if not to spiritual death. It 
has been well said that **The discontented 
wish is father to a sinful will. I wish for a 
better, is followed by, I will have a better ; 
and so the soul goes astray." 

BAIT FOR Few of Satan's devices are 

SATAN'S HOOK. gQ scductivc as those which 
tempt good men to do doubtful and evil deeds 
for pious ends. The use of grab-bags, raf- 
fling, and other modes of gambling at church 



286 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

fairs, and the getting up of amateur theat- 
rical performances and comic concerts as 
means of increasing church funds, may be 
cited as examples of doing evil that good may 
come. They corrupt young minds by draw- 
ing them away from God and awakening in 
them a passion for practices and amusements 
which are extinguishers of piety. When 
church officers and representative Christian 
men indorse such things they little think 
that they are making themselves bait for Sa- 
tan's hooks. Well does Shakespeare say of 
man's archenemy when thus baiting his hooks 
with good men's acts: 

"O, cunning enemy, that to catcli a saint 
With saints doth bait thy hook ! Most dangerous 
Is that temptation that doth goad us on 
To sin by loving virtue ! " 



WHERE IS Where is heaven ? Heaven 

HEAVEN? is within thee, O, man, if 

Christ be in thy heart, the hope of glory. 

Look, then, into thyself and find thy Lord, 

and where thou findest him be sure that thou 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 287 

hast found heaven — not heaven in its com- 
pleteness, but in its elements. The final 
heaven of hope — what is it but life in the 
Master's presence ? Such a life thou livest 
now by faith. After a few days, if faithful, 
thou shalt live it by sight. Thou shalt be- 
hold Him as he is. The heaven in which 
thou livest to-day is the antechamber of the 
heaven in which thou shalt live not many 
days hence. Therefore, be of good cheer, 
and w\ait patiently foj the end of all that now 
makes thy present heaven incomplete. 

INSIGNIFICANT Samuel Drew, the mcta- 
DEEDS. physician, was in the habit 

of observing that, "as daylight can be seen 
through little holes, so we may judge of a 
person's character by small actions as well as 
great." Hence a curl of the lip, a haughty 
toss of the head, or a sly glance at a mirror, 
trifling as the movement appears, whispers to 
the observer, " That person is proud; that 
woman is vain." Thus by various insignifi- 
cant deeds do men and women constantly 



I 



288 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

make proclamation to others concerning the 
moral texture of their souls. 



A PREACHER'S ^ preacher's power does 
POWER. jjQ|. i[q [^ ]^J5 brain so much 

as in his heart. Let one preacher be distin- 
guished for the greatness of his intellect and 
another for the largeness of his heart, and it 
will be found that the latter is the more suc- 
cessful soul-winner. The philosophy of this 
fact is apparent. The heart is chiefly con- 
cerned with the question of religion. It is 
the heart that is estranged from God which 
is the citadel of hostility to the Gospel, and 
which it is the aim of preaching to win. Love 
alone can charm away its hostility. A Brah- 
man once gave remarkable expression to this 
truth when he said of a missionary who was 
singularly affectionate, " I am afraid to see 
much of that man. There is something so 
winning about him that if I were to be 
much with him I am sure I should be- 
come a Christian." What, then, should 
preachers do ? Neglect intellectual culture ? 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 289 

By no means. A grand intellect commands 
respect. Let it be set on fire by divine 
love ; it wins men to God. What preachers 
need, therefore, is, not less intellectual cult- 
ure, but more love — more love for God 
and man. 

'"Rejoice evermore !'* Wliat 

A BLESSED 

WATCH- a blessed watch-phrase this is ! 

PHRASE 

And who that fully appre- 
ciates the wonderful love of Jesus can help 
being joyous ? Ah ! if Christians followed 
their Lord fully their hearts would always 
beat time to the music of heaven. If they 
lived " looking " into the radiant face of 
Jesus their tongues would be constantly sing- 
ing of his love. Saintly George Herbert 
gave quaint expression to the joyous motions 
of the renewed heart when he sang these 
lines: 

** My Joy, my Life, my Crown ! 

My heart was moaning all the day, 

Somewhat it fain would say ; 
And still it runneth, muttering, up and down, 
With only this, My Joy^ my Life^ my Crown ! " 



290 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

AN OPEN Faith opens a window 
WINDOW. through which the soul sees 

a God of love, a Saviour from sin, a state of 

endless purity, a heaven of ecstatic bliss. 

Unbelief seeks to wall up that window. 

Surely, unbelief is mad, and its teachers are 

the world's mischief-makers. 

SPIRITUAL ^ DELIBERATE purpOSe tO 

SUICIDE. practice things which one's 
conscience clearly condemns is a knife that 
cuts the tie of discipleship and separates one 
from Christ. It is spiritual suicide. 

A FORETASTE ^^ t)e Separated from God 
OF HELL. -g ^Q foretaste the misery of 
hell. To be united to God by a living, love- 
producing faith is to foretaste the joy of 
heaven. He who is not joined to God is 
dead in trespasses and sins; he who is united 
to him and loves him is " alive unto God 
through Jesus Christ." God can no more 
take the former to himself than can living 
men take the bodies of the dead into their 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 291 

households; but the latter, being made alive, 
and like him, by his grace, he will take to 
himself in his everlasting habitation. Is it 
not passing strange that the foniier will per- 
sist in making their earthly life a preparation 
for endless death ? And is it not almost as 
strange that the latter, having entered into 
spiritual life through faith, do not pursue it 
with unremitting, ardent, all-absorbing zeal ? 

A SOURCE OF ^-^^ ^^^^ brightness of the 
^^^- sunbeam makes visible the 

myriad motes which float in the air unseen 
by ordinary light, so does the near approach 
of Christ to a believer bring the hidden sin- 
fulness of the heart into strong relief. The 
effect is sometimes so staggering that the 
soul is as one bewildered, and it cries with 
agony, " How can such a sin-stained creature 
as I am presume to believe that God's prom- 
ise of purity will be fulfilled in me ?" And 
this fear of adding the sin of presumption to 
its already countless offenses paralyzes its 
hand of faith so that it fails to grasp the 



292 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

promise of the righteousness for which it is 
hungering and thirsting. But this fear is it- 
self a source of the very sin from which it 
shrinks, inasmuch as it is an act of presump- 
tion to doubt God's word. His promise of 
righteousness is given, not to the spotless 
but to the spotted soul. Hence for such a 
one to say, ^^ God will not purify my heart be- 
cause it is so very vile," is to impeach his 
veracity, to deny his faithfulness, to make 
him a liar, and to refuse him that obedient faith 
which he has made our primary duty. Hence, 
again, the seeker of purity is literally com- 
pelled to believe, or to increase the very sinful- 
ness he loathes. He should, therefore, "be 
strong in faith, glorifying God." 

A GRACEFUL REPUTATION, if it be the 
ORNAMENT, blossom of 3. purc character, 
is precious, and should be sacredly guarded. 
But considered as a means of happiness or an 
end of life it merits the epithet attached to 
it by Shakespeare when he called it "the 
bubble reputation." For since reputation is 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 293 

the estimate the public forms of one's worth, 
and since that public is made up of many and 
various minds subject to unnumbered and 
unreasonable prejudices, its opinion of an in- 
dividual is as liable to fluctuation as a fancy 
stock which speculators toss from hand to 
hand in an " Exchange." An illustration of 
this is given in the experience of Rev. Mr. 
Kilpin, who, passing through a street, heard 
a man say of him, ^' If ever there was a good 
man upon earth there goes one." This was 
certainly a very pleasant thing to hear. But 
on going down another street his self-compla- 
cency was wounded by hearing a second per- 
son cry out, " If ever a man deserved hanging 
that fellow does. He makes people mad with 
his preaching." Accepting this as a typical 
incident, men — public men especially — should 
learn not to seek reputation as an end of life, 
but only as a means of ur fulness; not to de- 
pend upon it as a condition of their personal 
happiness, but to live so purely as to feel self- 
approved and to be smiled upon by the All- 
seeing One. In such a case, though so 



294 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

unjustly maligned or despised by their fellow- 
men as to be counted, like their Master, of 
"no reputation," they can still be happy. A 
good reputation, if deserved, is a pearl of 
beauty and a graceful ornament; but a good 
conscience is of more value than rubies; 
malice cannot filch it away, misapprehension 
cannot disturb it. 

THAT PRE- Precious beyond all price 
cious BLOOD, to the behever is the blood 
of the Lamb. It washes away his guilt, 
cleanses him from the stains of sin, calms all 
his fears of deserved evil, and enables him, 
in full view of the eternal mysteries, to join 
with the Church in singing, 

"Sprinkled with His atoning blood, 
Safely before our God we stand, 

As on the rock the prophet stood 
Beneath his shadowing hand." 

PAINFUL '^^^ struggles of believers 

STRUGGLES, ^j^h their besetting sins are 

sometimes painful even to agony. Little do 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 295 

either censorious sinners or unsympathetic 
brethren know what tierce battles are being 
fought in such men's breasts. Nevertheless, 
they have the sympathy of their enthroned 
High-priest, who is (O, precious fact I) the un- 
seen witness of their deadly trials. And his 
sympathy is sure to be the channel of his help. 
'^Yea, I will help thee^'' he cries, as he be- 
holds their discouragement. Fight bravely, 
therefore, O, tried soul ! Your victory is sure 
if you cleave by faith to your invisible Helper, 
and your reward will be to hear him say to 
thee, even to thee, ^^Well done, good and 
faithful servant ! " Will not that approval 
more than compensate thee for all thou hast 
suffered or can suffer ? 



Ix domg benevolent work 

SHINE ON. 

one loves to witness gratitude 
in those one benefits. Such recognition of 
kindnesses is to the charitable worker what 
a cup of cold water is to a thirsty laborer. 
But charitable work is not always, perhaps 
not generally, thus rewarded. Ingratitude is 



296 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

a common characteristic of those whose ne- 
cessities are the fungi of their vices, and their 
ingratitude is apt to be as ice to one's chari- 
table affections. Yet genuine charitable love 
will not freeze in the breath of ungrateful re- 
turn, because it is of the nature of that love 
which led the Master to die for his enemies, 
and ^ from which flows that wonderful long- 
suffering that moves him to give this sinning 
world long space for repentance. Coleridge 
caught the spirit of this heavenly love when 
he said to discouraged workers for humanity, 
and to those whose old friends had forsaken 

them, 

** Shine on ! nor heed 
Whether the object by reflected light 
Return thy radiance, or absorb it quite ; 
And though thou notest from thy safe recess 
Old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air, 
Love them for what they are; nor love them less 
Because to thee they are not what they wefe.'' 

A PREGNANT *' What if the Christian 
QUESTION. religion be true, after all?" 
This pregnant question rose in a young law- 
yer's mind one evening as he stood on the 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 297 

doorstep of his home waiting for his servant 
to open the door. The man was an unbe- 
liever in the word of God. He had been 
saying many witty and sarcastic things against 
Christianity in a party of friends, and now 
this query, flashing suddenly into his mind, 
troubled him. Like the old man in the story 
of Sindbad, it clung to him with strange tenac- 
ity until he said to himself, " I have taken 
less pains to decide this great question, in- 
volving the most momentous interests, than 
I usually take in studying up a case of law 
for a retaining fee." The folly of this gross 
neglect weighed upon his heart like a night- 
mare and kept him awake all night. The 
next day he gave himself to the earnest study 
of the troublesome question. The result was, 
first, a rooted conviction that Christianity is 
true, and then a cordial acceptance and 
blessed experience of its sublime truths. If 
the reader be a skeptic who has never seri- 
ously examined the foundation of the Chris- 
tian system, can he do better than to ponder 

that lawyer's querv, ^^ What if the Christian 
20 



298 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

religion be true, after all ? " And if, like him, 
he should see it to be fearfully true in its 
bearing on the destiny of its rejecters, can 
he do a wiser or better thing than to em- 
brace it ? 

" My soul is sore vexed ! ** 

SORE VEXED. 

is an exclamation of David 
which earnest Christians are often moved to 
adopt when they stand amazed at the mis- 
chiefs done by wicked men, or at the follies 
occasionally wrought by injudicious brethren 
in church management. To those who fret 
at human folly Goethe says: 

** When you see things wrong, 

Never fret and fume ; 
Folly will be strong 

Until the day of doom." 

This is true, but by no means consoling. 
David offers a higher reason for refusing to 
fret when he says, " Fret not thyself because 
of evil-doers, . . . for they shall soon be cut 
down;" and Solomon says, "There shall be 
no reward to the evil man; the candle of the 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 299 

wicked shall be put out." Both writers thus 
bid good men to turn their thoughts away 
from evil-doers and their evil deeds to Him 
who will finally put an end to both. To 
" trust in the Lord and do good " is the best 
antidote to fretful moods of mind. Trust 
will keep one's soul calm amid the whirl of 
human folly; doing good may be the means 
of winning some vexatious sinners from their 
evil ways, and thereby diminishing occasions 
for vexation. 

LETTING IN A '^^^ ^^^ ^^^ Stimulates 
WOLF. j^ig already morbid appetite 

with highly seasoned food invites the demon 
dyspepsia to take possession of his stomach. 
Equally foolish is he who, having in some 
unguarded moment admitted doubt of God's 
truth into his heart, straightway takes to 
reading skeptical books. So, also, is he fool- 
ish who, when overtaken by misfortune, re- 
fuses to look for some star of hope and does 
nothing but brood despairingly over his con- 
dition. But he who, having been led into 



300 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

some great transgression, seeks to stun his ac- 
cusing conscience by rushing headlong into 
deeper moral mire is worse than foolish. 
His folly is turning to madness. All three of 
these classes would do well to weigh the as- 
sertion of these simple lines: 

*' To seek relief from doubt in doubt, 
From woe in woe, from sin in sin, 

Is but to drive a tiger out 

And let a hungrier wolf come in." 



A CRITICAL "All these things are 
MOMENT. against me," was Jacob's dis- 
tressing cry when required to part with his 
beloved Benjamin. A kindred exclamation 
not unfrequently leaps to the tongues of 
modern men when thrown into great straits 
by adverse events. "Circumstances are all 
against me ! " cries the half-despairing man, 
whose w^ay seems hedged up on every side. 
Ruin stares him in the face, and despair 
threatens to smite his energies with palsy. 
Such a moment in a man's life is critical, be- 
cause if he gives way to despair he is sure 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 301 

to fall a victim to the adverse circumstances 
which environ him. But why need such a 
man despair ? Circumstances are rarely un- 
conquerable by men who are true to them- 
selves, and can never do final harm to a dis- 
ciple who retains his trust in God. Rather, 
even when seemingly evil, they are so con- 
trolled by our loving Lord as to be made in- 
struments by which the believer may gain 
accessions of spiritual strength in the act of 
fighting them and an increase of glory in 
the kingdom eternal. It is, therefore, both 
the duty and g\ory of a man not to be con- 
quered by, but to conquer, adverse circum- 
stances. Both David and Daniel made them- 
selves strong by such fighting. So can every 
other believing man if he but will do it, since 
human strength allied by faith to the strength 
of Christ is always stronger than circum- 
stances. Let the disheartened believer learn 
from the success of millions of his Lord's 
loved ones to convert his evil surroundings 
into friendly auxiliary forces. But to do this 
he must have more /ai't/i. 



302 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 



WHY DOES George Herbert, among 
his Charms and j 
these quaint Hnes: 



PRAYER Dis- his CJiarms and Knots, has 

GUST YOU? 



" Who goes to bed, and doth not pray, 
Maketli two nights to every day." 

But what is the source of that *^ insurmount- 
able disgust " to prayer which permits a 
Christian to close his eyes at night without 
communing with God ? What makes devo- 
tion an insipid draught to him who once loved 
to pray? To such a man Massillon says, 
'' Mount to the source of your disgust toward 
God and every thing connected with him, 
and see if they shall not be found in the in- 
iquitous attachments of your heart. See if 
you are not a slave to yourself, to the vain 
cares of dress, to frivolous friendships, to 
dangerous animosities, to secret envies, to 
desires of popularity, to every thing around 
you ? " What is your reply, O, reader, to these 
questionings of the great orator ? Surely 
your conscience tells you that he is right. 
Your soul is sick with worldly fever, and 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 303 

therefore spiritual things disgust you. That 
fever is deadly, and will end in your complete 
separation from God unless you expel that 
accursed love of the world from your soul 
and return to Him whose love you have re- 
jected, but who nevertheless still woos you to 
return, saying, "Come unto me, and I will 
give you rest." " Have I not loved you with 
an everlasting love ? " 

One cannot help thinking^ 

OUR FIRST ^ ^ 

MOMENT IN sometimes of the probable 

HEAVEN. . , . - 

perceptions and emotions that 
come to the Christian soul when it first finds 
itself set free from its earthly tabernacle. 
Yet nothing but the experience can give one 
knowledge of what souls purified by faith 
actually see and feel in that grand birth-hour 
of their immortal life. Dean Stanley gave 
his conception of what that hour brings them 
in these beautiful words : *^ There the soul 
finds itself alone on the mountain ridge over- 
looking the unknown future. . . . We are 
left alone with God. We know not in the 



304 Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 

shadow of the night who it is that touches us 
— we feel only that the Everlasting Arms are 
closing us in ; the twilight of the morning 
breaks, we are bid to depart in peace, for by 
a strength not our own we have prevailed, 
and the path is made clear before us." O, 
glorious consciousness of victory won ! Well 
indeed sings a Christian poet of that glad 
hour : 

*' When we stand with Christ in glory, 
Looking o'er life's finished story, 
Then, Lord, shall I fully know, 
Not till then, how much I owe." 



SIN HAS TWO S^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^ statue with 
FACES. ^^yQ diverse faces. When it 

solicits its victim it reveals only its attract- 
ive and smiling face. When it has captured 
him it shows him its disgusting and re- 
pulsive side. Yet when it tempts again it 
resumes its charming aspect, administers 
a philter which deadens his recollection of 
the pangs which followed his former guilty 
deed, and lures him to repeat his follies. 



Faith, Hope, Love, Duty. 305 

Trench, in his Couplets^ puts this truth 
into these Hnes: 

** Sin, not till it is left, will duly sinful seem ; 

A man must waken first, ere he can tell his dream. '* 

Beware, therefore, O man, lest you be *^ hard- 
ened through the deceitfulness of sin,'* 



THE END. 



